‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ May Have Been Disliked, But…: Anil Shastri

“However, I won’t blame the star campaigners of the Congress for this,” Congress leader Anil Shastri said.

Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s son Anil Shastri.

(Photo: ANI screengrab)

Senior Congress leader Anil Shastri, who’s the son of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, said on Friday, 24 May, the ‘chowkidar chor hai’ slogan that the party raised during campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections “may not have been liked by the public.”

Speaking to news agency ANI a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic mandate and yet another debacle for the Congress, Shastri said:

“Some slogans like the ‘chowkidar (chor hai)’ one may have not been liked by the public. However, I won’t blame the star campaigners of the Congress for this. Because it began from Modi and Amit Shah, who used such extreme and negative language. So the Congress party had to give an answer, which they gave… Whatever questions Rahul Gandhi has raised on Rafale have not been answered by PM Modi or his government.”

Congress leader Anil Shastri to ANI

Shastri’s comments come on a day when the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee President, Raj Babbar, offered to resign from the post. Yogendra Mishra, the president of the District Congress Committee, Amethi, also resigned from the post taking responsibility for the Congress defeat. Notably, Rahul Gandhi lost out to BJP’s Smriti Irani in his party bastion Amethi by a margin of around 55,000 votes.

The Lok Sabha elections 2019 threw up a historic mandate for the BJP, which has managed to win more 300 seats on its own, while the Congress has barely managed to improve its 2014 tally, with 52 seats.