The Shiv Sena on Tuesday said the outcome of elections in five states has sent “a clear message” to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance need to introspect, PTI reported.
The Sena is a member of the coalition but has had differences with the saffron party in recent times. The two parties had contested the Maharashtra Assembly elections in 2014 on their own but formed a post-poll alliance.
“This is a clear message and it is the time for us to introspect,” the party’s spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Sanay Raut told reporters in Parliament complex in New Delhi.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the results have proved that the “BJP is nowhere in all the states”. She termed the outcome of the elections a “victory of democracy and victory against injustice, atrocities, destruction of institutions, misuse of agencies, no work for poor people, farmers, youth, Dalits, SC, ST, OBC, minorities and general caste”.
Janata Dal (Secular) leader and former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda said the BJP’s intention to get rid of the Congress and other Opposition parties displayed its arrogance.
“The people have made this nation ‘arrogance-free’ by voting out BJP,” Deve Gowda tweeted. “At least now the BJP should put some efforts to make this nation ‘problem-free’ and stop the unwanted ‘travel-spree’,” he added, in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s travels abroad.
The Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar also blamed the BJP’s arrogance for its defeats, PTI reported. The party’s chief spokesperson Nawab Malik said the ruling party’s “anti-people and anti-farmer” policies were also responsible for the results. “It is in fact a 5-0 defeat of the BJP,” Malik added. “The people have voted against the arrogance of leaders of the BJP.”
The Aam Aadmi Party said the results indicate people’s dissatisfaction with the BJP’s policies. “2019 will be BJP-mukt Bharat [BJP-free India],” senior party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh told PTI. “The results of Assembly polls indicate that people are fed up with jumla [rhetoric].” He asked the saffron party to seek votes for the work it has done and not in the name of constructing a Ram temple in Ayodhya.
National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah said people were tired of the BJP and this trend would continue in the elections scheduled to be held in 2019, News18 reported.
Congress leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said winds of change were sweeping the country. “This is not the time to be arrogant in victory but to strengthen ourselves ideologically, dig in our heels in the ground and begin a struggle,” he tweeted.
Congress leader and Punjab state minister Navjot Singh Sidhu tweeted a photo of him “basking in the glory” of the poll results. “The good days are about to be over, and Rahul Gandhi is soon going to be voted to power,” he said.
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