Puri (Odisha): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda on Friday dubbed the Congress a “parasitic party” which is standing on the crutches of others' votes and weakening its alliance partners. “Those who have done the most harm to the Constitution are the ones who are teaching the ruling party how to protect democracy,” the Union minister said while addressing the BJP's Odisha unit executive meeting. Referring to the Emergency, Nadda said, “Congress has become a 'parasitic party' and is standing on the crutches of others' votes.

Those who have hurt the Constitution the most are now teaching us how to protect democracy. Rahul Gandhi does not know how differently his grandmother (Indira Gandhi) used the Constitution.” He claimed that the Congress had dismissed elected governments 90 times in the past while the Narendra Modi government at the Centre has never dismissed governments of other parties in the last 10 years. Highlighting the “acceptability of the BJP among the people of India”, Nadda claimed that 57 per cent of the country's population supports the BJP and the party's governments are spread across 58 per cent of the country's area.

Nadda said, “We (BJP) are an all-India party which has coalition governments in 18 states and BJP alone is in power in 13 of these. On the other hand, Congress has zero in 13 states including Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh, Tezzbuzz, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Ladakh.” He said that Congress is dependent on other parties to win elections in some states. He said, “There was a direct contest between BJP and Congress in 64 Lok Sabha seats in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Tezzbuzz, in which Congress could win only two seats while BJP won 62 seats.” The BJP president claimed that the 'strike rate' of Congress is only 26 per cent in elections fought alone. Nadda said, “Congress can survive only with the help of other parties.