DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini Thursday said the Congress could win five seats in Haryana because it succeeded in spreading the lie that if BJP is voted back to power at the Centre it will abolish reservation and scrap the Constitution.

Saini made the remark speaking to reporters after Speaker Gian Chand Gupta administered oath to him as legislator in his chamber.

Saini, who was sworn in as the chief minister on March 12, won the by-election for the Karnal assembly seat held last month.

On Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda's demand from the governor to dismiss the state BJP government, Saini asserted that his dispensation had won the trust vote in March and there is no threat to it.

Asked about reasons for losing five seats to Congress, which scored zilch in the previous general election, Saini said "...We held a meeting of our MLAs and Ministers yesterday. The issue which has emerged is that in this election Congress took support of lies."

He said the Congress "succeeded in spreading the lie that if Modi ji becomes Prime Minister for the third time, the Constitution will be scrapped and reservation ended."

Ahead of Haryana Assembly polls due in October, Saini said that BJP workers will reach out to the SC community and visit every home and "expose the Congress's propaganda." They will also tell them that it is the Congress which insulted the constitution on various occasions, he said.

On Congress's claim that his government is in minority, Saini said his government still had a majority.

"On March 13, on the floor of the House, we won the trust vote. If Hooda feels the government is in minority and that he has the numbers, let him parade his MLAs before the Governor," he said.

Saini had taken oath as chief minister on March 12 after the party replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with him. Saini said the Congress may have wrested five seats, but the poll percentage of BJP in the LS polls in the state was more than the Congress.

BJP secured a vote share of 46.11 per cent against Congress's 43.67 per cent.

Saini said that in its sixty years of rule, Congress did not do as much work as the Narendra Modi government did over the past ten years.

The government brought out 25 crore people out of poverty, he said.

"I will appeal to people of state that they should understand the lies of Congress and propaganda they spread," he said.

Saini recently defeated his main rival, Congress's Tarlochan Singh to win the bypoll for the Karnal Assembly seat, which was earlier held by party colleague Manohar Lal Khattar.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, Khattar had retained the seat defeating Tarlochan Singh.

Saini, the outgoing MP from Kurukshetra, had contested the by-election for the Karnal assembly seat after he replaced Khattar as chief minister.

The bypoll was necessitated by Khattar's resignation as MLA from Karnal after his removal from the post of chief minister.

Polling for the state's 10 Lok Sabha seats and the Karnal assembly constituency was held in the sixth phase of the general election on May 25 and the results were declared on June 4.

Khattar, who was fielded by the BJP from the Karnal parliamentary segment, won the seat.
(editor@dailyworld.in)