New Delhi: Congress on Thursday launched a sharp rebuttal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he mocked the party’s showing in the Legislative Council elections, urging him to abandon “trolling and sermonising” and instead examine why the BJP came a cropper in both seats within Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency he represents, PTI reported.
Jairam Ramesh, the Congress general secretary in-charge of communications, argued that the election outcomes pointed to growing public anger with the Union government’s policies. He pointed to setbacks for the BJP in Varanasi, Nagpur, Lucknow, Prayagraj and Patna as evidence of a wider shift in voter sentiment.
“The Prime Minister needs to introspect, but instead, he’s sermonising others! Before counting Congress’s seats, I wish he’d also reflect on why the BJP lost both seats in his own parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, and how Congress managed to defeat the BJP in RSS’s stronghold of Nagpur?” Ramesh said in a Hindi post on X.
Congress Targets Modi’s Record
Ramesh alleged that the Prime Minister was sidestepping the economic hardships confronting ordinary households. He said families were battling rising prices, joblessness continued to trouble the youth, and private-sector investment had failed to gather pace.
“Drop the arrogance and reflect on these issues,” he said, asserting that voters had effectively delivered a “no-confidence motion” against the Prime Minister’s policies.
The Congress’s response followed Modi’s remarks a day earlier, in which he ridiculed the party for its weak performance in MLC elections conducted through paper ballots — a method opposition parties have repeatedly demanded as an alternative to electronic voting machines.
On Wednesday, the Congress escalated the confrontation by daring Modi to translate his faith in the BJP’s electoral appeal into policy: it asked him to pledge that all forthcoming Lok Sabha and state Assembly polls would be held using ballot papers if he was convinced that EVMs played no role in shaping results.
Across the four states where legislative council elections were held, the BJP and its NDA partners emerged victorious in 16 of the 28 seats. The Congress managed to secure a single seat, while the Samajwadi Party claimed five in Uttar Pradesh, among them both seats in Varanasi.
