‘Parasitic party that swallows…’: PM Narendra Modi lambasts Congress after Haryana election results

Hours after the BJP clinched a stunning election victory in Haryana on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the Congress as a “parasitic party that swallows its allies”.

Proving exit poll predictions erroneous yet again, the BJP comfortably sailed over the halfway mark in Haryana, winning 48 seats. The Congress, which was touted as the winner by the exit polls, was restricted to 37 seats in the 90-strong Haryana assembly.

Addressing BJP workers in the party’s headquarters on Tuesday night, PM Modi said the Congress wants to tarnish every institution. He was apparently referring to the Congress’s complaint to the Election Commission raising doubts about the alleged slow progress of counting.

“Congress is such a parasitic party that swallows its allies. Congress wants to build a country where people hate their heritage, doubt their national institutions, and want to tarnish the image of everything that the countrymen are proud of. Whether it is the country’s Election Commission, the country’s police, the country’s judiciary, Congress wants to tarnish every institution,” PM Modi said.

Stunned by the defeat, the Congress said the Haryana poll outcome was “totally unexpected, completely surprising, counter-intuitive and against ground-reality”. The party said it would not accept the election results.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP emerged as the second-largest party after winning 29 seats.

“In Jammu and Kashmir, its (Congress) allies were already worried that they were suffering losses because of Congress and today’s results have shown the same. You must remember that we saw the same thing in the election results as well. In Lok Sabha, half of the seats won by Congress were because of their allies. Apart from this, where the allies trusted Congress, the boat of those allies sank. In many states, the allies of Congress had to bear the brunt of Congress’s poor performance,” PM Modi said, according to ANI.

Referring to the Congress’s complaint, PM Modi said the party misled the nation.

“You will remember the kind of ruckus they created before the results of the Lok Sabha elections. During the elections too, these people and their urban Naxalite allies had gone to the Supreme Court to tarnish the image of the Election Commission. Today, they have done the same. Congress has tried to mislead the people of the country. Congress always tries to question the impartiality of our institutions, to tarnish their reputation. This has been the habit of Congress. Congress has been doing such things shamelessly,” he said.

The poll panel slammed Congress for giving “credence to irresponsible, unfounded and uncorroborated malafide narratives”.