On Himanta Sarma's prediction on 1,000 Congress delegates, Shashi Tharoor responds
At HT Leadership Summit, Himanta Biswa Sarma slammed his former party, the Congress, for electing Mallikarjun Kharge as its chief and said if Shashi Tharoor would have won the polls for the post, he would have said democracy has arrived in the Congress.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor hit back at Himanta Biswa Sarma hours after the Assam chief minister, who was at Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS) 2022 on Saturday, claimed that there are a lot of “good-thinking people in the Congress” and they will come to the BJP soon.
"These 1,000 people who voted for Shashi Tharoor (in the recently concluded Congress presidential election), I think they would be the ones joining the BJP in six months or one year," Sarma claimed.
Responding to Sarma's claim, Tharoor said those who do not have the courage to fight who might be tempted to do so.
“Those who show courage will never join the BJP, it is those who do not have the courage to fight who might be tempted to do so,” news agency ANI quoted Tharoor as saying.
Sarma also slammed his former party, the Congress, for electing Mallikarjun Kharge as its chief and said if Tharoor would have won the polls for the post, he would have said democracy has arrived in the Congress.
In the Congress presidential poll, Mallikarjun Kharge won 7,897 of the valid votes (84.14 per cent) of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates to Tharoor’s 1,072 (11.4 per cent), takes over as the first non-Gandhi chief of the party in two-and-a-half decades.
At HTLS, Sarma also rejected the argument that the BJP does not hold democratic internal polls and said any BJP president has to go through a democratic process and that person cannot be remote-controlled.
Sarma also said in 2024, the BJP will be expanding to two-three states and this expansion will continue for another two elections. "By 2029, you will see the BJP everywhere in the country," the Assam CM added.