By IANS,
Banda (Uttar Pradesh) : The Congress should learn its lesson from its devastating defeat in the Hisar parliamentary bypoll, Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal said Monday, terming the result a “referendum on the Jan Lokpal bill”.
“Considering the role we have played in ensuring a Congress rout in Hisar, the Congress party should take it as a referendum on the Jan Lokpal bill,” he said amidst cheers at a rally in this Uttar Pradesh town.
“In fact, all our concentration on ensuring defeat of the Congress in Hisar was aimed at making them understand the significance of our demand for smooth passage of the Jan Lokpal bill during the coming winter session of parliament,” he said.
“And of the Congress party fails to table the bill before the parliament during this session, we will be constrained to follow course in other states going to assembly poll early next year,” he added.
Earlier, in an open interaction with a group of local lawyers, Kejriwal clarified that they had nothing against the Congress.
“Our stand against the Congress was being misconstrued as prompted by certain political considerations, when the fact remains that Congress happens to be in power at the centre and is therefore alone in a position to introduce the Jan Lokpal bill in the parliament,” he said.
When some lawyers sought to confront him on his much publicised statement wherein he rated Anna Hazare as “above parliament”, he shot back: “That statement was clearly distorted by the TV channel to which I gave an interview. What I had stated was that the people of the country were above the parliament and sure enough Anna too was a citizen of the country.”
Another lawyer wanted to know if Supreme Court advocate and Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan’s statement on Kashmir was not enough reason for civil society to dissociate with him, Kejriwal said that was for Hazare to decide.
Kejriwal also addressed a gathering of gram pradhans (village heads) drawn from different parts of Banda district and made them take a vow not to vote for the Congress in case the party failed to keep its commitment of getting the Jan Lokpal bill passed during the winter session.
Later, he also addressed a similar rally in Kanpur from where he was going back to Delhi, only to return to Lucknow on Tuesday for yet another public meeting in the state capital of the country’s most populous state.