Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday tore into Rahul Gandhi for criticising the Narendra Modi government in its third term – albeit indubitably weakened compared to the previous two terms – accusing the leader of the Opposition of pipe-dreaming.
“Rahul Baba and company (the INDIA bloc), which also includes Mamata Didi. They sat pipe-dreaming, and the BJP went about sweeping the (Assembly) elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. The BJP formed the state government in Haryana for the third time in a row, and we will also form the government in Jharkhand and Maharashtra,” Shah said in a message to party workers from an event at the Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre in Salt Lake.
“After the results of the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Baba started saying in Parliament ‘Humney hara diya, hara diya, hara diya (we defeated them, defeated them, defeated them)… I don’t understand why his associates don’t explain it to him. I would like to inform Rahul Baba that the loser of a general election sits in the Opposition, and the winner takes oath as the nation’s Prime Minister,” he added.
The Nehru-Gandhi scion and others in the INDIA space – with 237 MPs in the Lok Sabha – have been jubilant since the general election results revealed that the BJP was dragged down from over 300 to 240 (despite claims of 400-plus this time).
Shah lauded Modi, noting that since Jawaharlal Nehru, no one has led the government three consecutive times.
“They mock us for winning 240. Even if they (the Congress) combine the seats they won in 2014, 2019 and 2024, their total doesn’t get to 240. Even now, with all (INDIA) allies, they have not been able to reach 240,” he said.
“But his (Rahul’s) arithmetic is strange, he will go on claiming they have won the election… let him stay in his own paradise,” he added.
The likes of the Congress’s Rahul, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee have repeatedly jeered at Modi 3.0 over its heavy reliance on the crutches of TDP (16 Lok Sabha MPs) and JDU (12 Lok Sabha MPs).
On Sunday, Shah did not spare Mamata either.
“Mamata Didi has been elated since we have received a relatively lower number of seats. She thinks this will slow us down in all that we have resolved to achieve. She and others like her should not be so delusional,” he said.
“We work on the basis of an ideology, not for ensuring our nephews become chief minister,” added the home minister, in an apparent jibe at Mamata’s nephew and heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee.
