'Reality is exact opposite': Congress' Jairam Ramesh on BJP's '400 paar' slogan for LS polls

‘Reality is exact opposite’: Congress’ Jairam Ramesh on BJP’s ‘400 paar’ slogan for LS polls

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday mocked the ‘400 paar’ slogan by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Lok Sabha elections, saying that the results for the ruling party have been proven to be the “exact opposite” what it set in the past polls.

Speaking to ANI, the Congress leader took a jibe at the BJP which aims to win more than 400 seats (out of total 543) in the Lok Sabha elections by the NDA, a feat achieved only once in India’s history – by the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and said that it is easy to set a goal and give a slogan.

“In the 2017 Gujarat election, BJP’s slogan was ‘150 paar’, seats secured 99. In the 2018 Chhattisgarh election, the slogan was ’50 paar’, and the seats secured were 15…In the 2019 Jharkhand assembly election, the slogan was ’65 paar’ but BJP got 25 seats. In the 2020 Delhi assembly election, the slogan was ’45 paar’, but secured 8 seats. In the 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly election, the slogan was ‘118 paar’ and secured seat 4. It is easy to give the slogan of ‘paar, paar’, however, the reality is the exact opposite,” Jairam Ramesh said.

Notably, the BJP, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has set itself the task of securing 400-plus seats for the NDA and 370 on its own.

In 2019, the Narendra Modi-led BJP set itself a goal of 300-plus seats — “Ab ki baar, 300 paar”. Five years later, it has ramped up the target and gave a slogan of “Ab ki baar 400 paar”.

In the 2019 general elections, the party captured 303 Lok Sabha seats on its own and along with its allies, they registered a victory on 353 seats.

However, the Congress and other parties of the Opposition bloc INDIA have alleged that the ruling party wants to achieve a 2:3 majority in the lower house of Parliament as it intends to change the Constitution.

Jairam Ramesh, while speaking about the Congress’ plan for the ensuing general elections, said, “We have begun a house-to-house guarantee programme. We are distributing 8 crore guarantee cards to houses. Rahul Gandhi is campaigning and so is Priyanka Gandhi…Mainly, we have three super-star campaigners, Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are campaigning in different states.”

The election for 543 Lok Sabha seats will be held in seven phases starting April 19. Nearly 97 crore voters are eligible to cast votes in the general election. The counting of the votes will be held on June 4.

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