New Delhi,
\nAs the lotus withered in Karnataka on Saturday, the Congress humbly acknowledged the need to work with other Opposition allies to keep the BJP away from power across India.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Opposition stood against the BJP in Karnataka and stopped it. We will continue to do so. We will work together. The Opposition will unite and coordinate to defeat the BJP and the RSS,\u201d Congress president Rahul Gandhi said minutes after Karnataka\u2019s two-day Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa resigned before the floor test in dramatic developments that have presented the Congress-JDS combine with a chance to form the government now.<\/p>\n
Rahul Gandhi\u2019s public applause of JDS supremo HD Deve Gowda on Saturday marks an important shift in the grand old party\u2019s coalition strategy indicating openness for pre-poll coalitions to consolidate the non-BJP vote. Pre-poll coalitions haven\u2019t been Congress\u2019 style. The party has always preferred post-election pacts.<\/p>\n
But Rahul signalled new hope on Saturday when he said, \u201cI thank Congress workers and Deve Gowda ji not just for defending the people\u2019s mandate but also for explaining to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS that there are limits to arrogance; that institutions of the country and the will of the people cannot be disrespected.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Congress president\u2019s fresh take on allies comes at a time when party leaders have privately begun to admit that what TMC chief Mamata Banerjee said immediately after the Karnataka results is right. \u201cHad the Congress and JDS allied, the results would have been different, very different,\u201d she had said.<\/p>\n
The turn of events in Karnataka may well herald a new era in coalition politics in India with regional forces uniting against the BJP, though historically, such alliances have been formed against the Congress. Rahul attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the front calling him \u201ccorruption personified\u201d and telling him \u201cyou are not above the country\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy message to the Prime Minister is he is not bigger than India. He is not bigger than the people, than the Supreme Court and the MPs. The PM must stop thinking he\u2019s bigger than all institutions but I am doubtful if he will ever understand this because he has been trained to respect only one institution \u2014 the RSS,\u201d Rahul Gandhi said after earlier accusing the PM of encouraging horse trading in Karnataka.<\/p>\n
He had said, \u201cThe idea of the PM fighting corruption is a blatant lie. He is corruption himself. He is doing everything to encourage corruption. There are phone conversations from Karnataka that say this\u2026\u201d In calculated criticism of the saffron fold, the Congress leader reminisced how BJP leaders, including the pro tem speaker, in Karnataka left the Assembly on Saturday even before the National Anthem was played.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you see that? This is what we are fighting against\u2026the idea that you can rubbish any institution, disrespect anyone simply because you happen to be in power,\u201d said Rahul Gandhi, recalling how the BJP and RSS \u201cdisregarded\u201d the people\u2019s mandates in Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya by preventing the Congress, the single largest party in all these states, from forming governments.<\/p>\n
In a message to the people of the state, Rahul also said \u201cI am proud that the BJP and PM have been shown by Karnataka that in India, power, money and corruption are not everything, the will of the people is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, As the lotus withered in Karnataka on Saturday, the Congress humbly acknowledged the need to work with other Opposition allies to keep the BJP away from power across India. \u201cThe Opposition stood against the BJP in Karnataka and stopped it. We will continue to do so. We will work together. The Opposition will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31605,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31606,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31604\/revisions\/31606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}