Chandigarh: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday dismissed the BJP’s ‘400 paar’ claim as ‘bakwas (nonsense) and said the party will not cross 200 seats in the Lok Sabha polls.
Kharge in a post on X also accused the Modi government of playing with national security by “imposing” the Agnipath scheme, and said the military recruitment programme would be scrapped when an I.N.D.I.A. bloc government is formed at the Centre to give justice to the patriotic youth of the country.
Addressing the media in Amritsar, Kharge said the BJP’s seats were declining as compared to the last elections while the Congress and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc were making gains.
Replying to a question on BJP’s ‘400 paar’ claims, Kharge asked the basis of such claims by the BJP. “When your (seats) are declining and ours are increasing. Forget ‘400 paar’, it is ‘bakwas’. They cannot even form the government and will not go beyond 200 seats,” Kharge said.
He said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was “non-existent” in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Telangana and “not strong” in Karnataka. “You are weak in Maharashtra, while in West Bengal and Odisha, there is a fight. How are you getting 400 seats?” he asked.
Replying to Union home minister Amit Shah’s jibe that Kharge “will lose his job” after Congress’ defeat in the elections, Kharge said, “I joined politics not for doing a job. I have been in politics to serve (people) since childhood, almost for as many years now as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s age,” the Congress leader said. Shah should think about his own job after June 4, Kharge added.
Attacking the Prime Minister and the BJP over their claims, Kharge said, “Modi ji talks too much and works less. BJP ka sau bakna, Manmohan Singh ka ek karna barabar hai (BJP’s 100 claims equals former PM Singh’s one claim)”.
Meanwhile, in a post in Hindi on X, the Congress president said, “By imposing the Agniveer scheme, the Modi government has played with India’s national security. We have three questions, whose befitting reply the public will now give to BJP in the last phase of the elections.”
“Is it not true that Agnipath has reduced the number of recruitments from 75,000 per year to 46,000 per year? Is it not true that the defence minister of the country has to repeatedly reiterate that he will reconsider the Agniveer scheme, make changes and improvements in it,” he asked.
