Ahead of Gujarat polls, Kejriwal asks ‘who takes Congress seriously?’

Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, claimed that the Congress will win less than five seats in Gujarat on Saturday. The AAP leader criticised his rival’s chances ahead of next month’s elections and questioned “who takes the Congress seriously” while speaking at a media conference organised by India Today in the national capital.

The people of Gujarat need change. If people did not want change, we would not have got any space. We are getting a 30 per cent vote share. We formed a government in Punjab. There is something different in Gujarat as well,” he said.

“In Gujarat, Congress will win less than 5 seats. We are number two,” Kejriwal said, handing over – quite dramatically – a scrap of paper with that prediction.

At an NDTV event, he made a similarly spectacular appearance but refused to forecast the outcome in favour of the BJP. The final forecasts will be made on a different day.

Pre-election polling conducted earlier today by ABP News – C-Voter gave the incumbent BJP a victory in prime minister Narendra Modi’s home state.

Over half the nearly 23,000 respondents said they planned to vote for the BJP. Twenty per cent favoured the AAP and 17 per cent the Congress.

The idea that the AAP might unseat the Congress as the main opposition party in a state where BJP and Congress contest elections regularly has drawn criticism.

Isudan Gadhvi, a former TV news anchor and social activist, was chosen as Kejriwal’s party’s chief ministerial candidate on Friday following a public “poll” akin to the one that selected Bhagwant Mann as the CM candidate in Punjab.

Gujarat will have two rounds of voting, on December 1 and December 5. On December 8, results from Himachal Pradesh, which is also governed by the BJP, will be made public.