A day after Congress got a new permanent president, a Dalit, amid pomp and fervour, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati launched an attack on the Grand Old Party, calling Mallikarjun Kharge a “scapegoat” and his election a “deceit”.
Senior Congress leaders have highlighted the Dalit identity of Kharge, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha.
Mayawati, who supported the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments, accused the Congress of neglecting the legacy of the “messiah of the downtrodden” Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and Dalits when it was in power.
“The history has witnessed that Congress has always neglected/disdained the messiah of the downtrodden and downtrodden, Param Pujya Babasaheb Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and his community,” the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said on Twitter.
She further alleged that Congress never cared about the safety and honour of Dalits when it was in power. “But they make them (Dalits) a scapegoat in its bad times,” Mayawati said.
Notably, the Congress party is in one of the worst phases of its journey and Kharge has now a massive task of ending factionism in the party by bringing all interests groups together and reviving its fortune in face of BJP’s back-to-back election victories.
Mayawati, whose party is out of power in UP for around 10 years now, alleged that Congress does not give the due political share to Dalits when it runs a government.
She asked, “Isn’t it deceit and pseudo-politics? People ask: Is this the real love of the Congress for Dalits?”
In the October 19 presidential election, which took place for the sixth time in the 137-year-old history of Congress, Kharge emerged victorious with a thumping majority by defeating his rival Shashi Tharoor by more than 6,000 votes. While Kharge scored 7,897 votes from Congress delegates from across India, Tharoor, a former UN diplomat, finished with just 1,072.
Kharge will officially take over as the permanent Congress president on October 26. In a press interaction on Wednesday, he vowed to fight back fascist forces, a reference to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).