Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor accused BJP of promoting its ‘polarisation agenda’, whereas Congress was trying to raise real issues.
In an interview to PTI, Tharoor said that Congress will focus on the “failures” of the Central government, one of them being on the ‘foreign policy front’. He said BJP’s 2014 elections famous ‘achche din’ was just “empty slogans”. He said, “The simple question to the voters is: Are you better off than you were in 2014? Have ‘achche din‘ come for you? Most will say no.”
When asked about his controversial remarks ‘Hindu Pakistan’ and ‘Taliban in Hinduism’, he said he does not regret it. Tharoor explained, “I did not say India is a Hindu Pakistan. I said if the BJP wins again and has the strength in both Houses of Parliament and the states, there will be nothing restraining them from fulfilling their project of creating a Hindu Rashtra, which would be a mirror image of Pakistan (since it too would state for a religious majority) and so reduce us to a Hindu Pakistan.”
He said that BJP has spread “climate of hatred, intolerance, and division that will only hurt India”.
Talking about the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Tharoor said that his party will be raising real issues like the “disaster of demonetisation”, the “botched rollout of the GST”, inflation, unemployment, farmer suicides and so on. He said that Rahul Gandhi set the agenda for the party during the no-confidence debate when he raised issues like ‘farmer plight’ and “Rafale scam”.
Tharoor clarified, when asked about BJP’s allegation that Congress is inclined towards pleasing the minorities,he said, “The Congress wishes to help the weakest and most marginalised sections of our society — and that happens to include the minorities, but also Dalits, Adivasis, women, the disabled.”