People have accepted INDIA as alternative to BJP; oppn bloc clearly a winner: Congress
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Friday said the victory of four INDIA bloc candidates in bypolls to seven seats proves that the people have accepted the opposition alliance as an alternative to the BJP and the ruling dispensation is not unbeatable.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said the news of the day is not the arrival of G20 leaders for the Summit but the "overall result of the seven by-elections that were announced today".
"Clearly, the winner is INDIA. INDIA beat the BJP 4:3," he said on X.
He said the BJP won in two seats in Tripura and the lone seat in Uttarakhand, but the lost in Kerala, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Of these, the BJP is the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh with a formidable majority, he noted. "The BJP and its money-power are not unbeatable. The INDIA alliance has demonstrated that the BJP can be defeated even in the BJP's fort.
"The results today are a good augury for the success of the INDIA alliance," Chidambaram said.
Congress deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Pramod Tiwari said the results announced on Friday are only a trailer to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when INDIA bloc will win majority across regions.
The "bumper" victory of Samajwadi Party candidate Sudhakar Singh in Ghosi confirms "my claim that India's candidate will get more than 50 percent votes on every seat", Tiwari said.
"This victory is the victory of 'INDIA' and those who were in doubt till now will become determined, and will give their everything to make 'INDIA' win and will save the country's democracy and defeat dictatorship," he said in a statement.
The assembly by-election results for seven seats in six states declared on Friday were a mixed bag for the BJP and the opposition INDIA bloc, with the saffron party winning three seats and one each going to Congress, JMM and TMC, while the Samajwadi Party won one seat.
The BJP retained the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand and Dhanpur in Tripura and wrested Boxanagar assembly seat from CPI(M) in the northeastern state, where the INDIA parties had joined hands, but lost the Dhupguri assembly seat in West Bengal to the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
"The people of the country are completely fed up with the statements, false promises, fraud, betrayal, cheating, inflation, unemployment and corruption of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The public was looking for an alternative and 10 percent voters of the country who were waiting for an alternative have now found an alternative in the form of 'INDIA' alliance," the Rajya Sabha MP said.
Tiwari also said the victory of INDIA candidates and the defeat of BJP in the by-elections held for district panchayat members in Mirzapur, Bareilly and Jalaun and Lucknow proves the BJP has been "uprooted" from East, West, North and South.
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
