With the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) achieving a thumping victory over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Delhi Assembly election, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday hurled barbs at the saffron party while urging regional parties to present a united front to keep the BJP out of power in Assembly and general elections.
Lauding the AAP’s emphatic performance, Mr. Pawar accused the BJP of polarisation and said the people of Delhi had rejected the saffron party’s divisive policies.
“The results indicate that winds of change are blowing in the country. I am not surprised by the results. The BJP, as was expected, played their communal card to polarise voters but failed comprehensively,” said the NCP supremo, remarking that the saffron party’s arrogance had proved to be its undoing.
The regional parties must come together to keep the BJP out of power. The Delhi results were not merely limited to the capital alone as people from all States resided there, he said.
Mr. Pawar, himself the prime architect of the unlikely coalition of the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress in Maharashtra, said the regional parties must come together under a “common minimum programme” and provide a stable government to keep the BJP out of power.
“As there is a climate of change in their own respective States, this is what people have expressed while exercising their franchise in Delhi.”
“One has seen what happened [to the BJP] in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. I do not think this sequence of electoral defeats will stop now,” he said.
Earlier, the NCP chief congratulated Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Twitter following the latter’s success.
“Congratulations to Shri Arvind Kejariwalji and Aam Admi Party workers for achieving a ‘Sweeping Victory’ in the Delhi Assembly Polls!” he tweeted.
