Kozhikode: Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said the Congress will take the lead in bringing together all secular forces to fight the BJP at the national level.
Speaking at a seminar on ‘Indian politics after UP election’, organised by the Muslim Educational Society (MES) here on Monday, Mr. Chandy said it was the “historic duty” of the Congress to unite like-minded parties to fight the divisive policies of the BJP government at the Centre. “The outcome of the Uttar Pradesh polls is not scary,” he added.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won in this democratic race. There was no point in masking this fact with statistical jugglery,” he said.
“But the developments after the UP polls are a serious cause for concern. The selection of a hardliner like Yogi Adityanath, known for speaking against pluralism, as UP Chief Minister is unprecedented. The installation of BJP governments in Goa and Manipur is worrisome too as they have upset democratic precedents,” the former Chief Minister observed.
He said the BJP had secured less than 40% of votes in the UP Assembly polls which was less than what the party got (42%) in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. “The Congress might have been defeated in the elections. But it will bounce back as it had done before as the party’s networking is intact across the country,” Mr. Chandy said.
CPI(M) central committee member A. Vijayaraghavan said the concerns of minority communities had grown after the victory of the BJP in UP polls.
However, BJP national executive council member P.S. Sreedharan Pillai countered the “unfounded fears” being propagated by other parties, saying that the Narendra Modi government had never practised any kind of discrimination. “No party in power could violate the Constitution. The blind opposition to the BJP is an instance of politics of negativism. Earlier, people used to vote for political parties, but now, the general public are the decision-makers,” he said.
Janata Dal (United) secretary general George Varghese called for the formation of a grand coalition with a common minimum programme to defeat the BJP.
Moderating the seminar, MES president P.A. Fazal Gafoor said the index of opposition unity would be against the BJP in the future. This time, the split in votes between the SP-Congress alliance and the BSP gave the BJP an edge in UP, he observed.
