Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh said his party "gracefully" accepts the people's verdict in the Assembly polls but took a dig at BJP's performance claiming it has been "virtually rejected" in four of the five states.
He wondered as what was BJP gloating about "as it had virtually been rejected in four out of the five states, while Congress had retained respectable position and vote share in all the states that went to the polls."
Asserting that the BJP may have won in Assam, Amarinder said it had yet to make any "significant presence" in the states like West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
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BJP should be content being a "North-Western sectarian party which can never dream of having an all India presence like the Congress," the former Punjab chief minister said in a statement.
"Winning or not winning doesn't matter, what matters is participation and performance and the overall performance of our party has not been bad," Amarinder, who is also the Deputy Leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, said in a statement.
He pointed out that Congress had retained number two position in three states and formed the government in Puducherry.
"Congress may be down, but it is certainly not out," he said, adding, the party has emerged as the main opposition in three states of West Bengal, Assam and Kerala.
Besides, Amarinder said, in Assam it was the "anti-incumbency" of 15 years.
On Badal's claim that coming polls were between friends
and foes of Punjab, Amarinder said that Badal was right as "We (Congress) are friends while SAD-BJP and AAP are foes of Punjab."
He sais state's economy was in doldrums, farmers were committing suicides daily, industry was in flight,uneployement was alarming, drugs were rampant while law and order had collapsed. "This made SAD-BJP foes of Punjab", he quipped.
Accusing both Parkash and Sukhbir Badal of speaking in different tones, Captain said if father-son were not on the same page, it proved beyond doubt that days of Akali government were numbered as the fed-up electorates were set to enthrone Congress in 2017 polls.
