Gurgaon: In Haryana, Congress will meet a fate similar to what it did in MP and Chhattisgarh, chief minister Nayab Singh Saini claimed at a rally in Sohna on Monday, days before the state goes to polls.
The CM, who was appointed to the state’s top post in April this year, said no prominent Congress leaders were willing to campaign in Haryana in the past few weeks.
Now that the tide had turned, Congress was scrambling to bring prominent leaders to campaign for the party in the state, Saini said.
His statement was made on a day Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi held rallies in the campaign’s final lap before the state votes on Oct 5.
“Suddenly, there’s news that Rahul Gandhi, who made anti-reservation statements on foreign soil, is coming to Haryana… Haryana’s Dalits will question how Rahul Gandhi dares to come to Haryana after opposing reservation. He should answer these questions,” the CM said.
Saini was referring to remarks made by Gandhi while he was interacting with students at a university in Washington DC earlier this month. Gandhi had said that India wasn’t a fair place, and Congress would “think of ending reservation when India became a fair place”. The Congress MP later clarified that his statement was “misinterpreted” and his party would increase reservation to beyond 50%.
On Monday, Saini said after Lok Sabha elections, Congress believed it could sweep Haryana polls. But the “sudden swing” in favour of BJP has “forced Congress to bring Rahul Gandhi to Haryana at the last moment”, he said.
The CM added: “Haryana is witnessing a situation similar to Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.”
Late last year, BJP formed govts in both the states where analysts had expected the party to perform poorly.
Battling anti-incumbency after having led Haryana for a decade, political observers and analysts believe the party could end in the red this assembly election.
Other factors that analysts believe could go against BJP are the 2029-20 farmers’ protest, and resentment over the Agnipath short-service scheme and unemployment. In the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, BJP also lost half of all ten parliamentary seats it had won in Haryana in 2019.
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