Puducherry govt fall due to Congress’s ‘harakiri’ type internal politics: BJP

Rajeev Chandrashekhar says BJP ‘is happy to take the credit’ but that it is hardly due to them that govt fell

Rajya Sabha member and co-in charge of polls for the Puducherry Assembly Rajeev Chandrashekhar. File

The BJP reacted sharply to former Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanaswamy ’s accusations that the fall of his government on Monday had been due to the BJP luring Congress MLAs, stating that the blame rested squarely on the Congress’s “harakiri” type internal politics rather than any external reasons.

Rajya Sabha member and co-in charge of polls for the Puducherry Assembly Rajeev Chandrashekhar told The Hindu that while four of Mr. Narayanswamy’s MLAs had deserted him , only one crossed over to the BJP.

He said, “Of the four, one remains a DMK MLA, two are yet to decide what they will doing and only one who deserted Mr. Narayanaswamy is with us. We didn’t have the numbers and made it very clear that we didn’t want to stake a claim to form a government. How come we are being accused of pulling down the government? The plain fact is that the BJP is the only party determined to grow especially in South India, while the Congress is busy committing ‘harakiri’ because of its internal issues. The Congress-led government fell because senior leaders in that party and who are leaders in their own right are feeling suffocated thanks to the antics of Mr. Narayanaswamy and Mr. Rahul Gandhi.”

The BJP “was happy to take the credit” but that it was hardly due to them that the government fell, he stated.

Rules out sympathy

Mr. Chandrashekhar refuted scenarios floated in some quarters that the premature demise of the Congress-led government in Puducherry would lead to a sympathy for Mr. Narayanaswamy, undercutting any anti-incumbency that the government may be facing.

“One only needs to look at the crowd at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Puducherry today [Thursday] to see that that is not the case. Mr Narayanaswamy’s own colleagues brought his government down becaue they knew the people did not not support it,” he observed.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the imposition President’s Rule in Puducherry and the Union Territory will go the polls in a couple of months.