"It's no longer black money if someone joins BJP..." Congress' Deepender Singh Hooda

Mar 03, 2024

Rohtak (Haryana) [India], March 3 : Coming down heavily on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the issue of 'Parivarvaad' , Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda on Sunday said that if someone joins the BJP with black money then it's no longer black.
"The point is if someone joins the BJP with black money then it's no more black money, if someone comes to the party from a political family then the PM won't talk about 'Parivarvaad', so this sort of politics BJP plays time and again and they are doing the same today as well," Hooda said.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh used the 'washing machine' metaphor on Sunday to criticise the former members of his party who have now joined the BJP, adding that whoever has left Congress is a "beneficiary of the washing machine".
"The people who need a washing machine are leaving and going there (joining the BJP). You count the Congress leaders who have left the party, be it the chief minister of Assam (Himanta Biswa Sarma)...all are the beneficiaries of this washing machine," he said.
"All need a washing machine; some need small, some need medium, and some need grand-size washing machines," he added.
When asked about the BJP's first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Deepender Singh Hooda said that the party has accepted their defeat from Haryana and that's the reason they haven't announced a single name from here.
"BJP has not announced names from Karnataka and Haryana. In Karnataka, they already lost (the assembly election). They have accepted their defeat from Haryana also, that's why they haven't announced a single name from here. They need more time to think the names from Haryana," he said.
The BJP Saturday released its first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, days after a marathon meeting of the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) that was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, naming 34 Union Ministers, including heavyweights such as Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh from their current Gandhinagar and Lucknow seats respectively.
In the first list of 195 candidates, the BJP included 28 women, 47 youth, 27 Scheduled Castes, 18 Scheduled Tribes and 57 OBCs. The party announced 51 candidates in Uttar Pradesh, 24 in Madhya Pradesh, 15 each in Gujarat and Rajasthan, 20 for West Bengal, 12 in Kerala, 11 each for Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, nine in Telangana, five for Delhi, two for Jammu and Kashmir, two for Arunachal Pradesh, one for Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Daman and Diu also.
Of 195 candidates, 34 are Ministers from the Centre and States and two are the former Chief Ministers.
The first list of 195 candidates released by the BJP on Saturday, however, made some drastic changes in Delhi, it has decided to field only Manoj Tiwari, the sitting Lok Sabha member from northeast Delhi, and Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi has been replaced with young face Basuri Swaraj, daughter of late BJP veteran Sushma Swaraj, from New Delhi; former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has been chosen to contest from Vidisha constituency in the state, Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from Kota.