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Rahul Gandhi says regional parties can't defeat BJP. RJD hits back
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had said that the regional parties have their place, but they cannot defeat BJP because they don't have an ideology.
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The war of words between Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal escalated on Monday after Rahul Gandhi's remark questioning regional parties' capability to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The RJD, whose ties with the grand old party have been frosty since the 2020 Bihar polls, objected to Gandhi's claims at Sunday's Congress chintan shivir wherein he said that the regional parties can't fight the BJP-RSS because they lack ideology, PTI reported.
"Regional parties are strong in a majority of Lok Sabha seats in the fight against the BJP, and the Congress should settle to be "co-travellers" and let them be in the "driving seat" in over 320 of the 543 parliamentary constituencies," RJD MP Manoj Jha said.
"I find it a little bizarre and out of sync," Rajya Sabha MP Jha told PTI, while referring to the Congress declaration at the brainstorming session which said that the grand old party was committed to establishing a dialogue with all like-minded parties to protect the spirit of nationalism and democracy and would keep open avenues for forging alliances according to political circumstances.
As a matter of fact, the Congress has been out of power in Bihar since the past 30 years. The state has been ruled by regional parties RJD and then by the JDU in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party over the years.
In the 2020 polls, the Congress could win only 19 out of the 70 seats it contested as part of the seat sharing arrangement with the RJD. Lalu Prasad's party could not form the government despite emerging as the single largest party in the 243-member Bihar Assembly.
The ties between RJD and the Congress have been strained since the 2020 polls. The differences came out in the fore after both the parties fielded candidates in the by-elections to two seats Kusheshwarsthan and Tarapur. A week before the elections, the Congress had announced it had exited the Grand Alliance, exposing the rift in public. The JDU went on to win both the seats.
In the legislative council polls held this year, both the parties had contested elections alone after RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav said that his party had no alliance with the Congress and had selected 23 candidates and left one seat for Left.
