By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has reiterated that the outcome of the general election would be a referendum on his three-year-old government.
He repeated his assertion after reports from New Delhi said his Congress Party had warned chief ministers of 11 states where it is in power that they would be held responsible for any debacle in the staggered election and sacked.
These 11 states together send 151 members to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.
Chandy launched his campaign for the Congress-led United Democratic Front last month on the twin plank of his government’s performance and the threat of communal divide posed by the rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“I have made it clear in the beginning that national issues would dominate the election but it would be a referendum on my government’s performance as well. As the head of this government, I have to take responsibility for any setback,” he said yesterday.
In 2004, A K Antony offered to quit as the state’s chief minister after the party drew a blank in the parliamentary elections. But he was soon made the country’s defence minister.
However, the Congress is hopeful of winning most of the 20 seats from the state this time.
According to reports, the poll outcome would be important for Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Karnataka’s Siddaramaiah, Haryana’s Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Uttarakhand’s Harish Rawat and Himachal Pradesh’s Virbhadra Singh besides Chandy.
“The message was conveyed last month. Rival groups in many states are gunning for the chief ministers,” the Hindustan Times quoted an unnamed senior leader as saying. “The CMs were told that much depends on the party performance in polls and hence, they need to pull up their socks.”
Meanwhile, Chandy said the BJP is involved in an individual-centric election campaign and there was neither a "Modi wave" nor a "BJP wave" in the run-up to the election.
"The BJP is campaigning with only one slogan, they are campaigning not for BJP but for Modi," Chandy said in Bangalore referring to senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi’s remarks that there was no Modi wave but a BJP wave. "They are involved in Modi centred, person centred election campaign."
To a question about BJP's claim that it would open its account in Kerala this time, Chandy said "they will have to wait for so many years for that to happen."
