Chennai. Congress leader and former Union Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday rejected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comparison of his third consecutive term with the record set by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Chidambaram said that Modi, who is going to become Prime Minister for the third time, has compared himself with Nehru. He said that under Modi’s leadership, the BJP has won 282 seats in 2014, 303 seats in 2019 and now 240 seats (32 less than the figure required for majority).
But Nehru’s Congress got 361, 374 and 364 seats respectively. Chidambaram told reporters here, “We reject Modi’s comparison of himself with Nehru. People will also reject it.” In his victory speech, Modi had said, “For the first time since 1962, a government has come to power for the third consecutive time.” Chidambaram said about the exit polls that people were fooled through estimates, which (surveys) were proved false by the election results.
He claimed, “Nobody was standing outside the polling booth to ask the trends, but suddenly they claimed through their survey that the BJP will win 350 or more seats. How did they all arrive at this number? The reason is that it was made in one place and photocopy copies were distributed to other people.” He thanked the people of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry for ensuring the spectacular victory of the opposition alliance ‘India’.
Congress has not rejected EVMs: Chidambaram
Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram said on Friday that his party does not reject the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and is in favour of improving VVPAT (Voters Verifiable Paper Audit Trail). The Congress leader said that he has never blamed EVMs.
Responding to a question at a press conference here, Chidambaram said that in the Congress manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, “we have not rejected EVMs”. Chidambaram was responding to a question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comment regarding the opposition alliance’s silence on EVMs.
He said, “Please read the manifesto, what we are saying is that the VVPAT slip is displayed for about 4-5 seconds for us to read and then the slip falls inside the box. We have said in the manifesto that there should be another improvement.” Instead of the slip falling automatically in the VVPAT box, the voter should be allowed to receive it, see it and then put it in the box and this improvement will leave no doubt in anyone’s mind regarding the EVM-VVPAT system.
Even now, if opinion is sought on EVMs, “four out of ten or three out of ten people doubt EVMs and I am not saying whether the doubts are justified or unjustified; as far as I am concerned, I have never blamed EVMs.” He said the Congress party’s stand is to bring further improvements in the EVM system. He said, “I am not denying that one or two leaders of the party are opposing the EVM system, but this is not the party’s stand.”