Thiruvananthapuram, March 19 (IANS) Kerala BJP President, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on Thursday, remarked, “You have to be a sycophant if you have to be successful in the Congress.”

Speaking to reporters, he said, “You can’t have it. Being in the Congress and having self-respect are two contradictions.”

Chandrasekhar will contest from the Nemom constituency in the Kerala Assembly election, scheduled to be held on April 9 to elect a new 140-member Assembly. The results will be announced on May 4.

He further added, “A regular Malayali politician is a man or a woman of incredible self respect.”

The Kerala BJP President, said, “I’m sorry to say this like this, but when you are a party that is built around, or is now built around only the sycophancy around one family, and you have no ideology, no uniting vision for the country or for the state, then obviously people from the Congress will get frustrated.”

He claimed that senior leaders are quitting the Congress because the party only wants to see how far one is “sycophantic to Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi.”

He professed, “Because the only qualification that the leadership of the Congress wants is how close you are to Rahul Gandhi or how sycophantic you are to Rahul Gandhi. That is why so many senior leaders are joining the BJP-NDA because, look, at the end of the day, people have self-respect.”

The BJP leader added, “They also want a life, a political life where they can protect their self-respect and do their work without having to carry somebody’s bag or listen to nonsense being spouted by a leader and just say it’s great because he is Rahul Gandhi.”

About reports of Congress fielding former MLA, K.S. Sabarinathan against him, Chandrasekhar said, “Everybody has a right to contest wherever they want. I look forward to a strong contest. I look forward to a mature contest, whoever the Opposition party candidates are.”

He shared that he does not consider these elections anything less than a contest of ideas and development.

He said, “If any MLA has great ideas for the development of his or her constituency, I am happy to compete with them. I don’t see any A, B or C name. It is competition between the NDA (and others).”

“We will see, doesn’t matter. Everybody is welcome and everybody should contest,” the state party President said.

Notably, the party currently has no representation in the 140-member Kerala Legislative Assembly, having lost its lone seat Nemom in Thiruvananthapuram district after its historic 2016 victory.

–IANS

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