Mangaluru: The Karnataka elections are not your typical elections; according to Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan. “It has a significant impact on all the elections that are lined up in 2023 and the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. What happens in the Karnataka elections will have an impact on all the elections,” he asserted.
Addressing a press conference on May 5 in the city Chauhan said “It is a landmark election in all respects. It will determine emergence of an elected dictatorship in 2024 and may destroy the tenets of federal democracy as enshrined in the Constitution”
“The BJP is trying to subverse the political Democracy in India by toppling elected governments in various states. Even in the most recent elections Congress got more votes than the BJP and looking at the electoral history since 1995, the BJP had got lesser vote share than Congress because of its divisive politics. The BJP had been able to get to the seat of power by its raw money power ill gotten by its nexus with big business houses in India namely the Adanis. How did Adani’s wealth gone up by multifold since 2014, the watershed year, he questioned.
“Right from the 1995 Assembly elections in the states the Congress party got more votes than the BJP but the party was not able to convert into seats for various reasons, which means the Congress party has a great sway among the voters. The fact remains that the BJP had been coming to the ruling position by subversion of Democratic process. It has happened in Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra where brutal use of money power has taken place,” said Chauhan.
“This subversion of the democratic process has led the country into a situation where the 2024 General elections be a fight between the elected dictatorship tendencies by the BJP against the democratic federal system followed by the Congress party. If the BJP is not defeated by the people in the Karnataka elections on May 10, it will be difficult to conserve Democracy in not just Karnataka but also in the country in future,” he added.
Taking out example of the divisive politics played by the BJP, Chauhan said why Rahul Gandhi was evicted from the membership of the Lok Sabha? Is or because he asked questions about the relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Adani group. Rahul has answered that he will ask questions like that even in the future till he gets to know what is the relationship between the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adani, he added.
Chauhan came down heavily with the choice of Chief Ministers in various states where it has toppled the democratically elected governments. He said that the BJP had been choosing those Chief Ministers who can handle corruption. “This was evident in the choice of Basavaraj Bommai as the Chief Minister of Karnataka. Bommai has come from another party. When there were other people in that party who could have been made a Chief Minister, why Bommai? He is made CM be ause he was able to hone corrupt practices? The 40 per cent charges by contractor Santhosh Patil who killed himself due to a debt trap has not been actioned by the Government either or the PMO has taken note of it, he said.