New Delhi: Congress party seems to be finding itself isolated within the INDIA bloc over its obstinacy and ‘big brother’ attitude in cornering the Centre. First, the party failed to garner allies’ support on raising issues in Parliament and now its claims of ‘biased and fixed’ Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) has been junked by its own ally – National Conference (NC).
Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah on Sunday advised the grand old party to not keep whining about the EVMs and at the same time, continue fighting elections.
“The same EVMs gave you 99 seats. You celebrated that victory, but then you go on complaining about the same when you lose elections. You can’t be selective in blaming the EVMs,” he said.
Omar’s rejection of Congress’ claims comes on the backdrop of the latter’s demand for reversal from EVM voting to ballot papers. The Congress president has already given a call for a bigger movement for shifting from EVMs to ballot papers.
Dismissing the claims as ‘opportunism’, Omar said that the party should take a consistent stand and if it has a problem with the EVMs, it should either boycott or stay away from the elections.
“Merely blaming the EVMs for losing elections is not the right approach,” he said.
The BJP was quick to react to Omar’s criticism of the Congress leadership. BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya took to X and said that Rahul Gandhi was increasingly looking like a loser, with whom nobody wants to associate with.
“Now, Omar Abdullah throws the Congress and Rahul Gandhi under the bus, on the EVM issue… EVMs can’t be good when Congress wins and bad when they lose… Rahul Gandhi is increasingly looking like a loser no one wants to stand with,” he wrote on X.
NC’s distancing with the Congress began soon after the Jammu and Kashmir elections. After winning the elections by a decisive margin, Omar had expressed the party’s displeasure with top Congress brass over leaving the canvassing to NC alone.
Notably, the increasing divide within the INDIA bloc has been visible over the past few days. TMC supremo recently endorsed demands of ‘leadership change’ at the top and also didn’t hesitate in giving her consent to lead the Opposition alliance.
The rumblings within the INDIA bloc got bigger as it also got support from other allies like RJD and a few others.
(IANS)
