NEW DELHI, Feb 25: Congress leader Manish Tewari on Sunday dismissed the BJP's 370 seats pitch for the Lok Sabha polls as “hubris and arrogance” and claimed that there was “pain and misery” on the ground after 10 years of the Narendra Modi Government.
While attacking the BJP over its performance of the last 10 years in Government, Tewari kept his cards about the choice of his constituency for the Lok Sabha polls close to his chest.
Asked if he would be contesting from Anandpur Sahib, the Congress leader simply said, “I am the MP from Anandpur Sahib.”
In an interview with PTI, Tewari also said the Congress was “very well placed” in Punjab for the general elections.
Asked about the speculation and rumours doing the rounds that he may switch to the BJP, the Congress MP said, “I do not dignify rumours with a response.”
He said posting of his recent speech in Parliament on social media amid the speculation “speaks for itself”.
Tewari had launched a scathing attack on the Modi government's economic performance during the Budget session of Parliament earlier this month.
On the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) finally getting its act together and recently sealing seat-sharing deals with the AAP and the Samajwadi Party, Tewari said elections have not been announced as yet and so time is not a constraint.
On whether the INDIA bloc was late off the blocks with the BJP aggressively working on a poll strategy, the former Union minister said ultimately people have to assess the incumbent Government on 10 years of its performance and, therefore, that is the litmus test of this election.
“It is the people who have to vote. Until elections are announced, there is a time and a place and a moment for doing everything,” he asserted.
Hitting back at critics calling the Congress-AAP alliance “unnatural”, Tewari pointed out that the BJP and the PDP were in an alliance in Jammu and Kashmir before the BJP decided to “dismember” the state and convert it into two Union territories and “throw the PDP leadership into jail”.
“So, I am pleasantly surprised when the word ‘unnatural alliances' is used,” he said.
With the Congress and the AAP not joining hands in Punjab, Tewari said politics is the preponderance of probabilities.
“Obviously you do not expect the ruling establishment and the principal opposition party in a state to come together (in Punjab). There are different models for every state. In Kerala we (the Congress and the Left) have been cooperating at the Centre and fighting at the state level for a very long time,” he said.
Asked how the Congress was placed in Punjab and if it would increase its tally from the last Lok Sabha polls, Tewari said the party is “very well placed”.
On the BJP and others' contention of ‘Narendra Modi versus who' in the polls and what would be INDIA bloc's response to it, he said, “We are a parliamentary democracy and not a presidential form of government. It is the MPs who should decide at the culmination of a poll as to who their leader would be and should be.”
On Prime Minister Modi and the BJP's claim that the party will get 370 seats and the NDA will get more than 400, Tewari said, “Hubris and arrogance are the worst enemy of any individual or political party.”
