‘Congress trying to create anarchy, Rahul’s march to SC is drama’, says Centre

NEW DELHI: Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday blamed the Congress’s “directionless leadership” for its continued electoral defeats and criticised the opposition party for holding institutions such as the Election Commission (EC) responsible for its repeated losses.“Losing elections back-to-back and reacting by taking out protests and taking matters to the streets has become the fate of the Congress… The reason for this is not the Election Commission, but the directionless leadership of Congress itself,” Chouhan said at a press conference at the headquarters of the ruling BJP in the capital.He also cited recent instances of infighting within the Congress, including in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, as contributing to the party’s electoral setbacks.“There is continuous infighting in Uttar Pradesh, the state president in Punjab had to be changed, internal leadership feuds are ongoing in various places… It is the leadership of Congress—a leadership that does not know the country, its people,” Chouhan added.In Punjab, the Congress replaced Amarinder Singh Raja Warring with Pargat Singh as state unit president amid escalating tensions between Warring’s camp and that of former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi. In Uttar Pradesh, supporters of newly appointed state Congress chief Aradhana Misra clashed with those of her predecessor, Ajay Rai.Meanwhile, Chouhan further accused the grand old party of repeatedly targeting constitutional institutions over the years, alleging that the Congress had made it a “pattern” to blame these institutions for its defeats.“For several years, the Congress party has been continuously attacking constitutional institutions. It has reached a point where blaming constitutional institutions for election defeats has become a pattern,” he asserted.Chauhan described the Congress-led opposition INDIA bloc’s march to the Supreme Court to file a petition against the alleged “vote chori” (vote theft) by the BJP in “collusion” with the EC as a “drama.”

“Rahul Gandhi’s march to SC to meet CJI is a drama. Congress is trying to create anarchy by spreading falsehood in its bid to come to power,” he alleged.His remarks came amid intensifying Congress protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Kumar has also come under scrutiny following a media report claiming that the two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally raised objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions they alleged were taken without their knowledge.