‘BJP nowhere near 246 in fair election…’: Rahul Gandhi says Lok Sabha polls ‘controlled election’

WASHINGTON: Terming the Lok Sabha polls as a ‘controlled election’, Congress MP and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, said that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not have been near 240 seats in a ‘fair election’.

While interacting with students and faculty at Georgetown University, Rahul Gandhi said that caste system had become a “big and fundamental question” in India. He said that the entire campaign was structured in a way that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could do his thing across the country. He stated that the Election Commission was doing as the BJP wanted.

He said, “There was also the caste census issue that became big and that’s a fundamental question in India you know. Share what you say in Hindi (Bhagidari) of the institutions, the structure, the power of the Indian state. So, these things suddenly started to come together and at some level I was frankly blown away by the wisdom of India”.

#WATCH | Washington, D.C, USA: Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, “If you look at the Indian government there are 70 bureaucrats who run the Indian government, secretaries to the government of India…Out of 70 people there is one tribal, three Dalits, three OBCs… pic.twitter.com/ntXaYX0eyt

— ANI (@ANI) September 10, 2024

“I would sometimes sit there and say, this is is quite amazing, right? There was like a wall that suddenly arrived and said, okay, we are not backing down now. And really, I don’t think the BJP, in a fair election, they were nowhere near 240 seats, no way, I mean, I’d be surprised if they had a financial, you know, huge financial advantage. They had locked our bank accounts for one but huge war chest. The Election Commission was doing what they wanted. I mean, the entire campaign was structured so Mr Modi could do his thing across the country. States where they were weak were designed differently than states where they were strong.So I don’t view it as a free election at all.I view it as a rather controlled election”, he added.

The Congress MP said that the Congress party, prior to the elections, was stressing that institutions have been captured and they were not given a fair playing field. However, he noted that people could not understand it.

He stated that people understood the situation when they started holding up constitution. Rahul Gandhi said that people understood that there is a fight between those who are protecting the constitution and those who want to destroy it and called it a “very strong element.”

Taking a jibe at the BJP-led government over taking control of institutions, Gandhi said, “Multiple things came together. So for example, prior to the election, we kept stressing on the idea that the institutions have been captured. And whenever we’d go, India alliance would go, we’d go, we stress on this idea that, look, the institutions are captured and we don’t have a fair playing field.

“The education system is captured by the RSS, the media system is captured, the investigative agencies are captured. And we keep saying this and people were not quite getting it ad we would keep saying it, keep saying it again and again and again and somehow they were just not getting it. And we couldn’t understand why because we were like, it’s obvious to us, it’s obvious to them and something wasn’t working”, he said.

“And then in one meeting one of the people who works with us said, listen, try holding up the constitution. And so I started holding up the constitution and everything we had said suddenly just exploded. So, India realized in this election, and really, I mean, not to divide it so crudely, but poor India, disenfranchised India, oppressed India, that India, it understood that if the Constitution goes, the whole game is gone. And so that just that was the first sort of, I saw it, there was a shockwave that when I would hold up the constitution, it would go like.

“I could see the shockwave going that people like, and then people started coming to me, you know, when you’re in these meetings, you’ll start hearing from the sides that, you know, they’ll bring a constitution or they’ll start saying it. So what was very interesting to me was poor people deeply understood that now this was a fight between those who are protecting the Constitution and those who want to destroy it. So that was one very strong element”, he added.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi addressed the Indian diaspora at an event in Virginia. He arrived in Dallas on Sunday for a three-day visit to the US. During his visit to Dallas, he interacted with students and teachers at the University of Texas. He also addressed the members of the Indian diaspora in Dallas. (ANI)