Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, in a Facebook post, that the results of the state assembly polls were “expected.”
The most important political analysis emerging from the results is a significant setback to the Congress party. It lost both the States of Kerala and Assam. In Kerala, it lost because its government was mired in corruption scams.
Jaitley went on to slam the Congress’ ‘policy’ of encouraging illegal immigration to build their vote bank in Assam and said that the alliance between the BJP, AGP and BPF brought about the Congress’ downfall.
He accused the national party of adopting fringe positions and therefore losing majority support.
In Tamil Nadu, it was a laggard in the DMK-Congress alliance. Its poor strike rate pulled the DMK alliance down. In West Bengal, the alliance with the Left was an ideological compromise. It proved counter-productive. Post 2014 General Elections, the Congress has increasingly adopted fringe positions. It didn’t behave as a natural party of governance.
He added that for the BJP, the election marked a “significant geographical expansion” and that the Left is ideologically irrelevant “globally” and that ‘extreme’ position espoused by those in universities cannot become the nation’s “mainstream agenda.”
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