Nomination of single candidate of opposition may defeat BJP: Former CM

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad: Congress leader and former state chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said that BJP could be defeated through the planful nomination of competent candidates in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election. “ The opposition parties should unite together and nominate a single candidate as a contestant in the election. For this 40 different political parties in the country will have to unite together and also avoid division of 65 per cent of the voting. The name of the nominee (from all the opposition parties) for the prime ministerial post should be decided after the election. The target focus should solely be to defeat the sitting prime minister Narendra Modi,” said Prithviraj Chavan.

He was speaking at the inauguration of the 3-day long state-level convention of Maharashtra Congress Seva Dal at Kumbephal, on Thursday. Prior to the lighting of the traditional lamp, the tributes were paid to the portraits of Rajmata Jijau and Swami Vivekanand on the occasion.

“Congress has the capacity to stop Modi. In the 1977 parliamentary election, Jaiprakash Narayan designed a formula to defeat Indira Gandhi. The same pattern could be utilised to apply a break on Modi. It is indeed a hard task, but not impossible,” said former CM.

“If Modi is not defeated in the coming LS polls then consider that it would probably be the last elections in the country. The funeral procession of democracy will be taken out,” feared Chavan.

Sensing this danger, Rahul Gandhi has invited 21 like-minded parties for a discussion on January 30. Modi will try his best to create a division and ensure that opponents do not unite together. There is a possibility that the Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal or the Telangana CM Chandrashekar Rao may be projected as a prime ministerial candidate to divert the unity, he said.

The organiser and Seva Dal’s state president Vilas Autade made an introductory speech. The secretary and general secretary of All India Seva Dal, Chandraprakash Vajpayee and Lalji Mishra and former legislature Keshav Autade spoke on the occasion.

The observer of Aurangabad, Mujahed Khan, Aurangabad District Congress Committee president Kalyan Kale, Aurangabad City Congress Committee president Shaikh Yusuf, Anil Patel, Namdev Pawar, Arun Shirsat, Prakash Mugadia, Ravindra Kale, Kiran Dongaonkar, Hema Patil, Pawan Dongre, Atish Pitale, Bhausaheb Jagtap, Anil Mankape, Anil Palaskar and others were also present on the dais.

Pawar and Zambad spotted

Congress leaders including former MP Uttam Singh Pawar and former MLC Subhash Zambad, who are rarely seen in the Congress programmes, however, were seen on the dais. Their speeches were not held. However, it was overheard that they may have come due to their close relations with Prithviraj Chavan.