No such thing as a 'silent' campaign in a hard-fought election: Chidambaram on Congress loss in Gujarat
The Congress leader weighed in on the recent elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh assemblies and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi should reflect on the fact that the BJP was in power in all three but was defeated in two.
FollowSenior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Sunday (December 11) said that the party is best placed to be the "pole" around which a non-BJP front can be built for the 2024 general elections, and asserted that the Aam Aadmi Party does not have much appeal outside Delhi with the exception of Haryana and Punjab.
The Congress leader also stressed that there were lessons to be learnt by the grand old party from the Gujarat loss, saying there is no such thing as a "silent" campaign in a hard-fought election.
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Speaking to news agency PTI, Chidambaram said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) played spoiler in Gujarat, like it did earlier in Goa and Uttarakhand.
The Congress leader weighed in on the recent elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh assemblies and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi should reflect on the fact that the BJP was in power in all three but was defeated in two.
"That is a huge setback for the BJP. The win in Gujarat, important as it is, cannot hide the fact that the BJP, the incumbent, was defeated decisively in Himachal Pradesh and MCD," the former Union minister said.
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The Congress in Himachal and the AAP in MCD polls won by a decisive margin of seats, he pointed out.
"The overall margin of votes in Himachal Pradesh may be small, but it was not a state-wide presidential kind of election. It was a constituency-wise election and we have to look at the margin in each constituency," he said.
"In many of the 40 constituencies won by the Congress, the margins were sizable. A state-wide margin is an inappropriate measure in a constituency-wise election," Chidambaram said when asked about the PM highlighting the less than one per cent vote share difference between the Congress and the BJP in Himachal.
On whether the AAP would pose a challenge to the Congress' leadership of the Opposition block after winning MCD polls and bagging about 13 percent of the vote share in Gujarat, Chidambaram said the AAP's win in the MCD election was not surprising as it is the ruling party in Delhi.
