Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann responded to a statement by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi about the Aam Aadmi Party's role in the defeat of the Indian National Congress in Gujarat by saying the former Congress president intended to win the election by visiting Gujarat just once. Mann was at NDTV. Mann said, "Rahul Gandhi began his "padyatra" from the location where the sun rises first, and elections were held in Gujarat, where the sun sets (Kanyakumari). Let him first adjust his time."
Questioning Congress party's ability to retain its MLAs, Mann said, "Congress is now not a party of Change but the party of Exchange. In whichever state, Congress won, BJP toppled its government. Congress made government in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. But the BJP is currently ruling both the states."
Earlier, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, during a press conference, echoed the sentiments strongly held by various Congress leaders about the rival Aam Aadmi Party. He said, today, AAP played a big role in the grand old party's poor performance in the recently-concluded Gujarat Assembly elections. “In Gujarat, If AAP hasn’t been put as a proxy or hasn’t been used to target the Congress party”, Congress would have won.
In his criticism of the BJP, Rahul Gandhi once more accused it of “dividing India” and fomenting enmity while also attempting to draw a line between what Congress should and should not aspire to be.
"The BJP is very clear about who they are, they divide India. They spread hate and they are very clear about who they are. The day the Congress understands what it is not, it will win every election it faces," He claimed that regional parties "don't have the vision" to overthrow the BJP. Gandhi’s statement is a reiteration of his party’s claim that AAP, a “B-team” of the BJP and colluded with them to hurt Congress.
Out of the total 182 seats, the BJP won 156, while the Indian National Congress saw a significant decline from its 2017 total of 77 seats, winning just 17. It was the BJP's worst electoral showing; it's previous worst was 33 seats in the 1990 elections. In this election, the BJP received 52.50 percent of the vote, a 3.45% increase. The vote percentage for Congress decreased from 41.4% to 27.28%. The vote share for AAP was 12.92 percent.
