‘K’taka poll results proof BJP will face defeat in 2024 LS elections’

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday claimed the BJP’s defeat in the Karnataka Assembly polls is testimony that the saffron party will be trounced in next year’s Lok Sabha elections. Speaking at a public meeting at Raina in West Bengal’s Purba Bardhaman district, he said people have the last word in a democracy, which is clearly evident from poll results. ‘BJP has literally vanished from South India… It is also not in power in the eastern states of West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand… It is only a matter of time before the party is vanquished,” the Trinamool Congress MP asserted. In the May 10 elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, the Congress won 135 seats, while the ruling BJP secured 66 seats. He also maintained that the BJP government at the Centre was withholding funds meant for West Bengal, since it lost in the 2021 assembly elections.