After losing the Bihar Assembly elections, Congress leader Salman Khurshid has put the blame on the voters. Khurshid, whose name has recently come up in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland scam said that the voters in Bihar ‘resisted liberal values’.
#Breaking | Top Congress leader @salman7khurshid blames the voters for ‘resisting liberal values’ after poor show in Bihar. pic.twitter.com/ZZMKdUOFY0
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) November 17, 2020
Khurshid said in a Facebook post that “If the mood of the electorate is resistant to the liberal values we have espoused and cherished we should be prepared for a long struggle rather than look for short cuts to get back into power.” In a long post, Khurshid praised the last Mughal emperor and also indirectly targeted Congress leaders who are criticising the party and its leadership after the repeated election debacles.
Sharing some advise of ‘introspection’ for his party colleagues who “suffer periodic pangs of anxiety”, Khurshid wrote, “When we do well, admittedly somewhat infrequently they take it for granted. But when we underperform, not even do badly, they are quick to bite their nails. By the looks of it there would be little of the nails left for future disappointments. Is it really a case of a bad workmen quarreling with their tools?”
In that post, he also advised the same ‘party colleague’ to refrain from criticising the Congress, saying, “It is another matter that consolidation of our principled politics, like any cause, requires periodic re-appraisal and re-writing of strategy and logistics. But those cannot be done in the media for our adversaries to checkmate it promptly.”
At a time when the party should introspect about performing so poorly in the elections, the Congress party, as usual, is looking outside for reason for the reasons for their defeat. It has become a norm for the opposition parties, including Congress, to blame to either raise fingers at the election process, usually by finding faults in EVMs, or to the declare the voters not mature enough to recognise the so-called liberal parties’ worth. Congress has been trying really hard to return to power by forging all sorts of alliances with other parties but nothing seems to work for the grand old party. Congress’ performance has been equally humiliating in the bypolls held in Gujarat, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Earlier, another Congress office-bearer had termed the Bihari people as ‘poor and greedy’, for not voting Congress to power.
People don’t consider Congress as an alternative: Kapil Sibal
Recently, Senior Congress leader, during a rare moment of truth, admitted that people no longer consider Congress as an effective alternative. Speaking during an interview after losing the Bihar Assembly elections, Sibal said it was clear from the Bihar Assembly elections as well as the by-elections held in several states that people did not consider Congress party as an effective alternative. “In some of the constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress candidates in the by-elections notched up less than 2% of the votes cast. Three of our candidates in Gujarat lost their deposits”, said Sibal asking the party to introspect for its consistently bad performance in elections.