New pact opportunistic: Prakash Javadekar
He also took objection to Mr Gandhi's comment that the BJP had weakened the Constitutional positions and curtailed the freedom of the media.
Bengaluru: Calling the Congress and JD(S) alliance opportunistic, Union Minister for Human Resources Development, Prakash Javadekar regretted on Saturday that despite losing the people's mandate, the Congress was clinging to power through the backdoor in the state.
Speaking to reporters here on Saturday, he said while the BJP's popularity grew by 250 percent and the number of its MLAs shot up from 40 to 104 in the recent assembly pll, the Congress's numbers went from 122 to 78 and those of the JD(S) from 40 to 37. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah himself lost in Chamundeshwari with a huge margin and could scrape through only in Badami, he noted.
“As many as 14 ministers lost the election and yet, the grand old party's desperation for power is such that it has totally surrendered to a junior partner, And what's funny is that the Congress is celebrating as if it has registered a thumping victory," he added.
Ridiculing Congress president, Rahul Gandhi's statement that the Opposition parties would together defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, he contended that the coming together of parties without a common ideology and pursuit of negative politics against an individual would never succeed.
He also took objection to Mr Gandhi's comment that the BJP had weakened the Constitutional positions and curtailed the freedom of the media. "It is the other way round. No one has forgotten who imposed Emergency on the nation and curtailed all the fundamental rights ,including freedom of speech. The Congress party did not spare even the judiciary. It degraded Constitutional institutions such as the Election Commission of India and Controller and Auditor General of India and didn't allow Parliament to function," he said.