Gujarat Election 2017: Sharad Yadav’s faction to contest Guj polls in alliance with Congress

The latest entrant into the Gujarat electoral fray, Sharad Yadav, on Saturday declared his intent to field candidates in alliance with the Congress despite Friday’s jolt from the Election Commission, which denied Yadav’s rebel faction the arrow symbol.

Yadav announced that he would be moving the high court challenging the EC’s decision to grant the arrow symbol to Nitish Kumar, recognising the Bihar chief minister-led faction as the real Janata Dal (United).

Yadav also announced that his party had already chosen an election symbol, ‘autorickshaw’, but desisted from giving out the name of the political outfit he would be floating.

Moreover, sources close to the former JD(U) patriarch told DNA that his outfit was gunning to win three percent of the seats in Gujarat assembly, which comes to around 5. The seats to where the party would be fielding candidates have been decided. 

“The BJP is in tatters in Gujarat and it is clear from the number of rallies that the PM is to address there. It is his native state and not that big, and yet over 50 rallies of the PM have been arranged. What does this show?” asked Yadav. “The BJP will be completely drubbed in Gujarat,” he added. 

Deprecating the government’s celebration of the Moodys rating upgrade on Friday, Yadav said institutions such as Moodys and the World Bank did not understand India and that their indicators mean nothing. Calling “government patting its back on Moodys report” a “joke on the people of India”, Yadav said, “It is ridiculous that our own economists including Dr Manmohan Singh are not being relied upon.”