SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: Congress MP and senior leader Shashi Tharoor, who took time off in the middle of his Goa campaign to speak to O Heraldo & Herald TV, went as far as to say that the INDIA Bloc was poised to ‘sweep’ all seats in Kerala and neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
Tharoor said, “We are clear that we are looking at the kind of result that the BJP has been dreading. Having done well in 2019 we will do even better in the South. And we will do much better in Karnataka and Telangana.”
When asked about the challenge in North India, the former MoS for External Affairs said, “The BJP has maxed out in the North. In 2019 there were six States where it won every seat, three States where they won all, but one, and two States where they won all, but 2. In those States they have nowhere to go, but down, we are getting an indication that it’s their election to lose. If they lose 32 seats, they lose majority (BJP won 303 in 2019).
A combative Tharoor claimed that the BJP has lost the narrative and in fact he said crossing 400 is doing damage to the party and is indeed laughable.
He said, “First of all I’m not sure if this is true. The narrative from our side is that the BJP has lost control of the narrative. They have stopped saying ‘chaar sau paar’, because it has only done them damage. The hype has been so completely divorced from reality, but in the case of the Congress, the fact of the matter remains that both people like we have been saying it for quite some time and no in the recent weeks in leadership as such the Gandhi family and others have been openly saying that the BJP’s 400 is laughable, 300 is impossible and even 200 is going to be challenge for them in the situation we’re seeing today.”
Asked to explain the basis for these figures, Tharoor said, “This is based on reports from the ground. Exit polls are taken but not released. But the word is buzzing around. BJP has access to the same rumours. There is an increasing note of desperation in the BJP. They are realising that their story is over.”
He was quizzed about the major challenge which lies ahead of the Congress after the 2024 elections of stitching together a government, since it is bedeviled with a number of contradictions before the elections itself, Tharoor was confident of doing a repeat of 2004. The contradictions such as a senior AAP leader resigning because of Congress alliance with the AAP, the TMC openly attacking the Congress and the Left in Bengal were flagged as hurdles in the INDIA Bloc’s path.
To this, Tharoor nonchalantly replied, “I’m not worried for a couple of reasons. Number one, from the very start, and the unusual thing about the India alliance is that it came together much before the elections. In previous episodes of coalition formation, these alliances came together after the elections, having attacked each other during the elections. So number one, about parties that disagreed with each other during the elections, agreeing to serve in that larger interest, the larger interest here is stopping the BJP coming to power for the third time.”
Pointing that the Opposition parties had no alternative, but to stick together, he quoted Benjamin Franklin’s famous line, “If we don’t hang together we’ll all hang separately.” “This is exactly what the parties have realised. Number two, if you look at the previous experiences in 2004, UPA came together after the election results and there were parties like the TMC which had served in Vajpayee’s government. There were parties like the Left, which had ferociously attacked us, for example in Kerala, who supported this government, TMC as part of it, the Left from the outside in 2004, because they felt the more important thing was wresting control from the BJP leadership. The same logic will apply now. I have no doubt and I do have friends in the very parties you’re mentioning who have told me that while there may be differences just now, it’s going to disappear the day there is a chance to form an alternative government to the BJP, as this happened in the past in 2004, it’ll happen again in 2024,” he asserted, ahead of the May 7 elections in Goa.
