BJP can go to any extent to stay in power, say AAP, Congress

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, January 30

The defeat of the AAP-Congress joint mayoral candidate in Chandigarh today left the two alliance partners of INDIA fuming against the BJP, which managed to win the poll after eight votes were declared invalid.

Poll rigged

If they (BJP) can do this — rigging the poll and declaring eight valid votes as invalid —- that too under the watchful eye of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, imagine what they will do in the Lok Sabha poll, when so much is at stake for them. Raghav Chadha & Pawan Bansal

Though the two partners will not be contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha poll in Punjab together, as declared by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, they will attack the BJP as they consider it as a common enemy and threat to democracy.

The mayoral election, in which BJP candidates won all three seats, was the first defeat for the INDIA bloc. Top leaders of AAP, led by Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha, were strategising the elections, while a close aide of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was ensuring that the alliance’s councillors were not poached.

However, party strategists say that losing one poll, where it was not the voters, but representatives who had to choose their leader of the House, has given the ruling party and principal opposition party a perfect opportunity to hit out at the BJP, especially after the Ram Mandir inauguration scenario, which has consolidated Hindu votes in Punjab and Chandigarh.

Chadha and former Congress MP from city Pawan Bansal, addressing mediapersons, said what happened in the Chandigarh poll was illegal and a murder of democracy.

“If they (BJP) can do this – rigging the polls and declaring eight valid votes as invalid – that too under the watchful eye of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, imagine what they will do in the Lok Sabha poll, when so much is at stake for them,” the duo said. They exhorted voters to be wary while casting their votes as a win for the BJP could mean the end of democracy in the country.

While both of them declined to comment on whether they would contest poll together, they were unanimous in their call to voters to save democracy by “not voting for fascist forces”.