Rahul should first understand he is responsible for Cong.’s poll defeats: BJP

BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi
| Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

The BJP on Saturday (March 8, 2025) took a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his remarks about his own party leaders and said he should first understand that he is responsible for his party’s defeat in elections and stop blaming others for his “failures”.

This came after Mr. Gandhi, while addressing party workers on the second day of his two-day Gujarat visit, said there was a need to filter out leaders and workers from the party who were working for the BJP and warned of strict action, even removals.

Reacting to his remarks, BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the condition of the Congress has worsened ever since Mr. Rahul and his mother Sonia Gandhi came at the helm of affairs of the party.

“The most unsuccessful leader of the Congress in its 140-year history was holding a meeting of party workers in Gujarat to teach them the core mantra of success. Although it’s an internal matter of the party, his statements definitely point to the internal misery of the Congress and his deteriorating mental state,” Mr. Trivedi told reporters at BJP headquarters here.

After constantly putting blame on the constitutional institutions, government and media, he has started blaming his own people, the Rajya Sabha member charged.

‘Worst leader in Congress’

“You will never find such an example of any leader publicly humiliating people of his own party in this manner,” he said. If Gandhi introspects, he will realise that he is “the worst” leader in the party, Mr. Trivedi claimed.

Another BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said, “Rahul Gandhi has trolled himself and his party in Gujarat, and shown a mirror to himself – he was putting blame on Kharge ji and his party workers for his failures. He said more than half of his party leaders were in cahoots with the BJP while he got his party defeated in more than 90 elections. In this sense, he is the biggest asset of the BJP.”

“Are you in cahoots with the BJP,” the BJP spokesperson asked Mr. Gandhi in a video byte posted on X. Mr. Poonawalla asked Mr. Gandhi to first evaluate himself to “realise” why he has become a “non performing asset” for the party, instead of putting blame on “electronic voting machines, the election commission, electoral rolls, his party workers and people”.

“If getting the party defeated in the election is an art, the artist is Rahul Gandhi,” he said. The BJP spokesperson also questioned Mr. Gandhi for putting his party workers under “raceka ghoda” and “barati ka ghoda” categories and asked him to at least consider them human.

“He said that race ke ghode ko barrat mein laga diya [horses supposed to be deployed in a race were used in the groom’s procession to a wedding],” Mr. Poonwalla said and asked, “Was it a question on the leadership of Mallikarjun Kharge [Congress president]?…Is Rahul Gandhi eyeing Kharge ji‘s chair [position in party]?” He asked Mr. Gandhi to stop insulting Mr. Kharge with such remarks and calling his party workers “ghoda (horse), gadha (donkey), babbar sher (lion) and billi (cat)”.

“Introspect on how much your family is responsible for the bad condition of the Congress in Gujarat and the entire country, and take some action,” Mr. Poonwalla added.

Mr. Trivedi alleged that nobody from the Congress ever visited Gujarat to see the “world’s tallest statue” of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel ever since it was built. “This shows that the Nehru-Gandhi family’s respect for its leaders also changes when they get real respect,” he added.

‘Cong. taking Muslim League’s place’

Mr. Trivedi said that though Mr.Gandhi in his remarks called Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Mahatma Gandhi as the Congress biggest leaders, the party has gone “far away” from their ideals and embraced the ideals of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who too was a Congress leader.

This is “clearly visible” from the statements of the Congress’ allies and the budget presented by its government in Karnataka recently, he alleged. “The Karnataka budget has made it very clear that the space that the Muslim League had before the partition of the country, is now being taken over by the Congress in a well-thought-out manner in Indian politics,” he added.