The Congress party recently released its list of star campaigners for Bihar bypolls, and to everyone’s surprise, two big names were missing from the list – Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. While Congress defended the move, saying the Gandhi family does not go to by-elections for campaigning, the JD(U) and BJP were quick to grab the opportunity to slam the Congress party and its leadership.
Janata Dal (United) spokesperson Ajay Alok said that the list is an acceptance by the Bihar Congress that if Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi campaign for the party, it loses the election and thus they have kept Sonia and Rahul out of the star campaigners’ list. He went on to congratulate the state Congress party leaders for recognising the ‘panuati’ (inauspicious person).
Bihar BJP spokesperson Arvind Singh also made a similar remark. He quipped that Rahul, Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi are no longer fit to campaign for the Congress in the country. Singh, however, added that their names should have been included in the list at least for the sake of quorum. Singh also alleged that the exclusion of the Gandhi family from the list shows that these big leaders are not fit to show their faces to the public. He added this is the reason that while a leader (Kanhaiya Kumar) of the ‘tukde-tukde gang’ got a place in the list, the Gandhi family did not.
However, the Congress party hit back at the ruling alliance terming the JDU-BJP spokesperson as “fools”. Congress leader Prem Chandra Mishra said that the spokespersons don’t know the working style of the party and are unaware that no member of the Gandhi family goes to any by-election. He questioned why the JD(U) does not send its chief Nitish Kumar to campaign in the panchayat elections.
Notably, the Congress star campaigners’ list includes Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mevani, Meira Kumar, Shatrughan Sinha, Kirti Azad, Imran Pratapgarhi and Hardik Patel.