The Congress party has never announced its Prime Ministerial candidate before the Parliamentary elections, said senior party leader and former Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram.
Responding to a query on the way Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami was harping on the lack of clarity about their PM candidate, Mr. Chidambaram said that there was no rule that the PM candidate should be announced before the election.
Morarji Desai, V.P. Singh and H.D. Deva Gowda were elected Prime Ministers only after the election. However, when it was pointed out that Congress had not got a majority to form a government on its own on those occasions, Mr. Chidambaram said that his party has never announced its PM candidate before polls.
“I have been in the Congress for about 50 years. In no election has the Congress in its election manifesto or through announcements, identified anyone as PM candidate. It is different that people assumed it (the PM candidate),” he told the media here on Saturday.
Even in 2014, then then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, did not say who was AIADMK’s PM candidate. “The AIADMK now has deviated from the path of Jayalalithaa (by announcing Narendra Modi as its PM candidate),” he said.
That the AIADMK has been claiming that only Mr. Modi could be an able PM is only because the AIADMK and BJP have formed a mutual admiration society. “Instead, people should say that,” he said.
When his attention was drawn to the BJP repeatedly claiming that India has not seen any development under the 50-year-rule of the Congress, he said the India’s per capita income was ₹270 and the average lifespan of Indians was 32 years in 1947. “Is it still the same now?” he asked.
“If they say that India should have had much more development in the last 70 years, I do accept it. But, not (the allegation) that India has not at all developed. They are turning a blind eye to the facts,” the former Union Minister said. The size of below poverty line (BPL) families that was 70% during Independence, despite a manifold population growth, has now become 20%. Major contributor for this is the Congress,” he said.
When asked if he had anything good to say about the Modi government, he said that the very fact that it continued with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme and the midday meal scheme, introduced by Congress, without stopping them, is good. “Otherwise, I don’t find anything new executed by the BJP Government,” he said.
Reacting to BJP leader L.K. Advani saying that those who oppose the BJP are not seen as anti-nationals, Mr. Chidambaram said that it was a condemnation of Mr. Modi.
Party State unit president, K.S. Alagiri, and national secretary Sanjay Dutt were present.