'Politics of money, caste and religion rejected,' says Sharad Pawar following Congress victory in Karnataka

The politics of money, caste and religion practiced by the BJP has been rejected, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar said in the aftermath of the results of the Karnataka Assembly election, adding that a similar trend could be witnessed in the 2024 general elections.

One of India’s seniormost politicians, Pawar, also known as a master of coalition politics, said that the people of Karnataka have taught a lesson to the BJP over its "divisive politics" and have handed over power to the Congress.

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“A similar trend is likely to be witnessed in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” said Pawar, reacting to the Congress victory in the Karnataka polls.

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“Although the BJP was in power there, the entire top brass of the government and senior saffron party leaders went there to campaign… We suspected that the money used by them would go against them, and that’s what has happened,” he said, adding that people are fed up with the politics of ‘khokha’, a term used for boxes of money distributed during the election season.

Pawar said that the BJP was used to grabbing power in states by bribing the MLAs of other parties, which he claimed the masses have now disapproved of.

“They did it in Karnataka… they toppled a government in Karnataka,” Pawar said referring to the toppling of the HD Kumaraswamy-led JD(S)-Congress coalition government in 2018.

"The same happened in Maharashtra where the BJP took power in a similar fashion,” he said referring to the toppling of the Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra.

“There is no BJP in Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, besides Delhi, Jharkhand, Punjab, West Bengal, Bihar, Rajasthan.”