Jaipur: Indian voter has always been a surprise and one day BJP will also come to know about it, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor Said on Sunday.
His remarks come in the backdrop of the party’s rout and defeat in the recently concluded assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. UttarakhandGoa, Punjab and Manipur,
Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), Tharoor said the Congress could have done much better in Uttarakhand and Goa, but we had very good chances of being the single largest party.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said, “But you remember that the number of voters in both the states is relatively less and that is probably what contributed.”
In politically important Uttar Pradesh, despite a high-profile campaign led by the Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi VadraThe party managed to win only two of the 403 assembly seats, saw a 2.33 per cent drop in vote share and lost the security deposit of most of its candidates.
Tharoor said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra campaigned remarkable and vigorously for the party, and “from my point of view, I do not think the Congress can be blamed on the basis of campaigning by any one person”.
“I think in some states where our presence is systematically reducing, the issues are bigger for the party as well as the viability of the party,” he said.
On Priyanka Gandhi’s election campaign, the MP said, “You must have seen her everywhere, including being arrested once or twice by the Uttar Pradesh Police. You have seen her a lot on the spot and running in the state.”
The 66-year-old leader also expressed surprise that political analysts described the results as “forecast findings”, adding that very few people had predicted a BJP victory until the exit polls.
“If this was a foregone conclusion, all pundits should have said that during the last five-six weeks of campaigning. Very few, if any, only when exit polls were coming out that the story changed and people said the BJP was going to win.
“Till then there was no question in my mind that most people were expecting a very, very close fight, and some were unknowingly saying that the Samajwadi Party was ahead,” Tharoor said.
The Indian voter has the potential to surprise and one day they will take the BJP by surprise. But now she has given BJP what it wanted.
The 15th edition of JLF began here on Thursday and is being held in a hybrid format for the first time since its inception in 2006. Due to Kovid it was held from around 5 to 9 March.
Turkish bestselling novelist Elif Shafaq, American author and 2002 fiction finalist Jonathan Franzen, South African novelist and the Pulitzer Prize for 2021 booker Winner Damon Galgut, Australian author and 2003 Booker winner DBC Pierre, English actor-writer Rupert Everett, and renowned Jamaican poet Kei Miller are among 250 writers participating in JLF this year.
His remarks come in the backdrop of the party’s rout and defeat in the recently concluded assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. UttarakhandGoa, Punjab and Manipur,
Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), Tharoor said the Congress could have done much better in Uttarakhand and Goa, but we had very good chances of being the single largest party.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said, “But you remember that the number of voters in both the states is relatively less and that is probably what contributed.”
In politically important Uttar Pradesh, despite a high-profile campaign led by the Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi VadraThe party managed to win only two of the 403 assembly seats, saw a 2.33 per cent drop in vote share and lost the security deposit of most of its candidates.
Tharoor said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra campaigned remarkable and vigorously for the party, and “from my point of view, I do not think the Congress can be blamed on the basis of campaigning by any one person”.
“I think in some states where our presence is systematically reducing, the issues are bigger for the party as well as the viability of the party,” he said.
On Priyanka Gandhi’s election campaign, the MP said, “You must have seen her everywhere, including being arrested once or twice by the Uttar Pradesh Police. You have seen her a lot on the spot and running in the state.”
The 66-year-old leader also expressed surprise that political analysts described the results as “forecast findings”, adding that very few people had predicted a BJP victory until the exit polls.
“If this was a foregone conclusion, all pundits should have said that during the last five-six weeks of campaigning. Very few, if any, only when exit polls were coming out that the story changed and people said the BJP was going to win.
“Till then there was no question in my mind that most people were expecting a very, very close fight, and some were unknowingly saying that the Samajwadi Party was ahead,” Tharoor said.
The Indian voter has the potential to surprise and one day they will take the BJP by surprise. But now she has given BJP what it wanted.
The 15th edition of JLF began here on Thursday and is being held in a hybrid format for the first time since its inception in 2006. Due to Kovid it was held from around 5 to 9 March.
Turkish bestselling novelist Elif Shafaq, American author and 2002 fiction finalist Jonathan Franzen, South African novelist and the Pulitzer Prize for 2021 booker Winner Damon Galgut, Australian author and 2003 Booker winner DBC Pierre, English actor-writer Rupert Everett, and renowned Jamaican poet Kei Miller are among 250 writers participating in JLF this year.