New Delhi: Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor stressed the fact that his party should not be complacent after the victory in the Karnataka polls since voters can change their behaviour between state and national elections, news agency PTI reported. He cited Congress’s poor performance in the previous general elections despite victories in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assembly polls. He further said the party cannot assume that “because it worked in one state, it can work nationally”.
“In 2018, we (Congress) not only came out as the single-largest party in Karnataka, but also registered victories in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Yet, when the Lok Sabha elections came around, BJP trounced us in these states. So, if the voters can change their mind in a matter of months between a state and national election, we must not be complacent,” PTI quoted Tharoor as saying.
Talking about the Congress’s victory in the recent Karnataka polls, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said having a “strong and effective local leadership” and emphasising on local issues worked in their favour.
“The Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is himself from Karnataka, Gandhi siblings came and campaigned, but the lead was taken very much on the ground by local leaders. The emphasis on local issues, local preoccupations, economic issues, infrastructure issues in Bangalore all of these. The things that matter to voters is what the Congress focussed on,” Shashi Tharoor said.
He further attributed BJP’s defeat to its “very much top-down and centre-driven” campaign in the state.
“At the local level, they were much more disempowered and so people know Mr Narendra Modi and Mr Amit Shah are not going to come and live in Karnataka and run the government. Whatever they had to say was discounted by the voters, whereas when you think in terms of who is going to actually be in charge in Karnataka and you look at what BJP was offering the previous four and a half years, people thought this isn’t enough for us, we need a change,” he said.
Notably, the grand old party won 135 seats out of 224 in the Karnataka assembly elections, leaving BJP with 66 seats in the state elections held in May this year.