Kapil Sibal's message to Congress after Karnataka election win: ‘For the next 5 years…’

A day after Congress registered an emphatic win in the Karnataka assembly elections, Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal advised his former party to win “people's hearts” for the next five years in the state by being “open, honest, non-discriminatory.”

In a tweet, Sibal said, "Karnataka, winning elections is tough. Winning people's hearts is tougher! For the next 5 years win people's hearts by being: open, honest, non-discriminatory."

“BJP lost for not being any of this!” he added.

Sibal, who was a Union minister during successive Congress-led UPA governments, quit the Congress in May last year and was elected to the upper house as an Independent member with the Samajwadi Party's support. Sibal was also a member of the so-called G23, a group of dissenting Congress leaders who had expressed their concerns about the party's functioning and called for reforms and introspection. He recently floated a non-electoral platform 'Insaaf' aimed at fighting injustice.

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Earlier reacting to the Karnataka election results, Sibal had tweeted, “The PM lost, The people of Karnataka won. No to: 40%, Kerala story, Divisive politics, Arrogance, Falsehood. Congress deserved to win.”

Congress successfully ran an aggressive campaign against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka on the issues of corruption and price rise, winning 135 seats in the 224-member assembly. The grand old improved its vote share by more than four per cent across different regions of Karnataka.

In the 2018 elections, Congress garnered a vote share of 38.04 per cent, followed by the BJP (36.22 per cent) and the JD(S) with 18.36 per cent. In the just-concluded polls, Congress' vote share zoomed to 42.88 per cent; that of JD(S) dropped to 13.29 per cent. The BJP, however, was able to hold to its vote share of 36 per cent.