In the face of exit polls that show the BJP losing the Delhi Assembly elections, the party’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi said on Sunday said loss or win, she will take responsibility. The comments by Bedi are seen as an attempt to distance Prime Minister Narendra Modi from a possible defeat of the BJP.
Counting of votes for the keenly-contested Assembly polls on Saturday will be taken up on Tuesday. The comments came even as Union Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman met Bedi and spent an hour at the former IPS officer’s Uday Park residence in South Delhi. “A survey is always a survey. Also, I think we need to wait for February 10 for the final result because in some Assembly seats, the margin is slim. So it could swing either way,” Bedi told reporters when asked to comment on the projections by the exit polls.
To a question about the possibility of a BJP defeat, Bedi said that whatever be the poll outcome, whether it is win or defeat, she will take responsibility. AAP appears set for a sweeping victory, according to Saturday’s exit polls. The BJP was projected to be the second-largest party way behind AAP, the polls said.
“We will talk after the results come out. We’re hopeful that the results will favour us,” Sitharaman told reporters after her meeting with Bedi. Sitharaman said Bedi’s statement that she would take “full responsibility” if her party suffers a loss was her individual statement. “She is the CM candidate and that statement is her own. She is being upfront about it,” the Minister added. Two days ahead of the Delhi polls, BJP chief Amit Shah had contended that the election outcome cannot be a referendum on the functioning of the Modi Government.
Shah’s comments were in line with the remarks of Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Delhi polls. “It is true that it is an election for chief ministership. The election in a State cannot be a referendum (about Centre’s functioning). Holding that the electoral mandate in the national Capital cannot be seen as a referendum on the Modi Government, Naidu had said in an interview, “It is an election for Chief Minister and not for Prime Minister.”