New Delhi: Congress leader Anil Shastri, son of former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, has blamed the “excessive negative campaign” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the grand old party’s humiliating defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Speaking to News18, Shastri said that the ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ slogan was rejected by the masses. “The Congress failed to address public issues and the people did not accept the ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ slogan. The excessive negative campaigning against the PM did not agree with the public,” he stated.
Refraining from commenting on AICC chief Rahul Gandhi’s poor performance as leader of the opposition, he said, “I have not said anything against the party leadership and I will not continue to do so.”
It can be recalled that the Congress and their allies did poorly in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the results of which were announced on Thursday, May 23. This time, the NDA won a whopping 353 seats whereas the UPA got 97, doing better than the 2014 elections where they won a mere 66 seats. The AICC chief lost Amethi, a seat that generally went to the Gandhi’s, to BJP’s Smriti Irani by a massive margin. He, however, did exceptionally well in Kerala’s Wayanad were he was up against CPI’s P P Suneer.
