Breaking silence over the resounding defeat suffered by the Congress party in Himachal Pradesh assembly polls, hill state’s six-time Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Friday came out with blazing guns against the party high command for wrong allocation of seats.
Squarely blaming the party top brass for the defeat, Virbhadra claimed that he went unheard on the selection of candidates. “Congress would have been in power in Himachal if I was being heard,” said a Congress veteran who turned 84 the previous month.
Targeting the state Congress chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukkhu, Virbhadra also demanded his replacement from the party’s top-post in the state. He claimed that the Congress is a democratic party and fresh organizational elections be held to replace the “nominated” president who had completed his five-year term.
Virbhadra, mincing no words, said that the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee president should be replaced before the lok Sabha elections as there was no provision anywhere that the party chief cannot be replaced before polls. “It seems that he is so much in love with the chair that he doesn’t want to leave,” he said taking a jibe at his bête noire Sukhu.
At the same time, he made it clear that he was “not the candidate for any post”. He even indicated that he had no plans to contest the elections.
Talking about the party’s defeat in November 2017 polls, Virbhadra said that those people come to join the Congress who knew nothing, “have no adhaar (base)…and they were given tickets without taking into consideration the rules and procedures”, while claiming wrong distribution of tickets as the sole reason for the loss.
Virbhadra maintained that some of the names he suggested were given ticket. At the same time, without naming anyone, he said that “those who have been sent do not know anything about the state. I have suggested names considering who will win from which place…and if they would have seriously looked into my suggestions, Congress would have been in power”.
Regarding ensuing 2019 lok Sabha polls, the former Chief Minister claimed that the ‘Modi wave’, that had swept the nation in 2014, had now faded, “and will not stay for long. This time, elections will not concentrate on personality, but on issues”.
“I want the Congress to do well in 2019 elections…The groundwork is done and there is only need to encash the same. Modi wave was there but it does not persist anymore,” he said.
Asked about the party’s strategy for the parliamentary polls, Virbhadra said that he was “not in the team” which makes the strategy, while adding that he hope that those who will make it will come out with the right strategy.
Virbhadra also dubbed as “political vendetta” the disproportionate assets case against him, saying that the “truth will prevail in the end”.
Without naming anyone, Virbhadra gave enough indications that his political rival and former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal and his son Anurag Thakur were behind the cases against him.
“HPCA is behind all this…I am not against anyone…but I was targeted because as the Chief Minister, I had gone after exposing the undue favours extended to the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association in Shimla, Dharamshala, etc, by Dhumal during his tenure because his son was at the helm of cricketing affairs of the body,” he said while also naming the Union Minister Arun Jaitely for being part of the same.