NEW DELHI: Indian National Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday hailed Rahul Gandhi as the “front runner” for India’s Lok Sabha elections and said he would be a natural candidate to take up the post of Leader of Opposition in the Lower House.
In an interview PTI After his party’s fourth consecutive victory in the Lok Sabha elections, Tharoor said the message of the election was that voters had “rewarded” the Bharatiya Janata Party’s “arrogance” and “my way or else attitude”.
“It will be a challenge for Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, who are not used to much consultation in running their governments. I think this will be a test of whether they can change their approach and become more accommodating and conciliatory within the government and also with the opposition,” Tharoor said of the NDA’s next coalition government.
The former Union Minister said this time the Modi-led NDA government may become a “majboor sarkar” (helpless government) on several issues as the parties in the NDA will have to agree on every point.
“Already the Agnivir scheme has been questioned by one political party saying it needs to be revisited and a second party – the JD(U) and Chirag Paswan – has also supported this. There are leaders in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar who are demanding that special category status be given to the states which the BJP government has refused to grant so far, but this will have to be reconsidered,” he said.
Tharoor suddenly stated that going forward, a more consensus-based model of governance would be needed.
He accused the Modi government of treating Parliament like a bulletin board for the last decade and expecting every decision to be approved by Parliament, but said that was not feasible now with over 230 strong opposition members.
Supporting Rahul Gandhi for the position of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Tharoor said the former Indian National Congress leader is undoubtedly a driving force in the Lok Sabha.
“Mr Gandhi and Indian National Congress president Kharge campaigned extensively across the country and with Kharge serving as Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House, it would be natural for Rahul Gandhi to do the same in the Lok Sabha. I have been making my views known both publicly and privately in this regard,” Tharoor said.
“The opposition to the government is now strong and the leader of the opposition should undoubtedly be the most popular person in the party,” he said, referring to Gandhi.
Tharoor also used a cricketing analogy, saying Gandhi was “undoubtedly the man of the match in the polls” and that in many ways the Indian National Congress had “hit a home run”.
“It was close in some places. In my constituency we had a super over at the end of the T20. There are cricket parallels here and there but as you can see in the World T20, there were concerns about the pitch we had to bat on and we had no choice but to play on the pitch we were given but it could have been a much more level playing field than it was,” he said.
In Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Tharoor defeated Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar by a margin of over 16,077 votes.
Asked about the close contest and whether the Left had given him a hard time, Tharoor said CPI candidate Pannyan Raveendran had bagged 2.5 lakh votes.
“But another thing is that in the three regions represented by the CPI(M), the CPI candidate has come last and the BJP candidate has come first. Legitimate questions are being raised as to why and how this happened. But, at the end of the day, a victory is a victory and we are savoring it sweetly,” Tharoor said. PTI.
Speaking about his message for the 2024 term, Tharoor said the message is very clear that the Indian electorate will not allow democracy to be taken for granted in this way.
“We have seen everything from demonetisation, which was declared without consulting or informing the Cabinet, to draconian lockdowns notified at all, even to state chief ministers, with only a few hours’ notice. All this suggests that we are witnessing the end of a kind of dictatorship that has brought disgrace to our democracy not just nationally but internationally too,” Tharoor said, adding that this is the biggest lesson.
The government is currently a coalition government and the prime minister has to consult with allies before taking any major decisions, failing which the government may not survive, the Congress leader said.
Tharoor praised the BJP’s progress in increasing its tally in the lower house of parliament to 99 seats, saying it was a very good achievement and party leaders were very happy that the numbers were in line with “what we saw on the ground.”
“There is always room for improvement on what can be improved. Of course, we did not expect to lose all the seats in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. These areas require introspection within the state governments as to what went wrong and the headquarters also needs to look into it,” he said.
“Meanwhile, most other regions are performing well, and the number of states that have improved significantly outnumber the number of states that have stagnated or declined,” he said.
Tharoor also credited the party’s achievements to Gandhi’s two Pure India Marches and its alliance strategy.
Published June 7, 2024 11:44 IST
