Congress on decline for decades, Rahul's 'vote chori' charge bereft of basis: BJP

New Delhi: The BJP on Friday cited historical poll data to assert that Rahul Gandhi's allegation of "vote chori" is bereft of any basis, and that the Congress' fortunes in elections have been on a declining curve after 1984, when it won a majority in the Lok Sabha for the last time, hitting the bottom in 2014 when the party was still in power.

BJP leader G V L Narasimha Rao, a former party MP and poll analyst, said in a statement that the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha seems to suggest that the Congress' fall began only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi led his party to power in 2014, blaming it on a collusion between the Election Commission and the government at the Centre.

"The fact is, the Congress has been on a declining trajectory from its best-ever performance in 1984 when Rajiv Gandhi won a landslide victory with over 48 per cent vote share and a tally of 414 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats. After a slide in popular support over the next three decades, its worst ever performance was registered in 2014 when it won just 44 out of 543 seats with a vote share of 19.5 per cent," he noted.

It cannot be Rahul Gandhi's argument that the Election Commission before 2014 was conspiring against the Congress and working for the BJP, he said, noting that Manmohan Singh was leading the Congress-led UPA government at that time.

Gandhi has been accusing the Election Commission of effecting changes in the voter rolls by deleting and adding names to suit the BJP, and ran a "Voter Adhikar Yatra" in Bihar against the poll watchdog's Special Intensive Review of the electoral roll.

The EC has rejected his allegations and has asked him to file his complaints on an affidavit.

Rao said the Congress party's long decline began from 1989 and continued till 2014 when Modi became the prime minister, he said, citing national and several states' data over a number of Lok Sabha elections to make his point.

"To grab public attention, Rahul Gandhi has been claiming that his revelations would have the political potency of an atom bomb or a hydrogen bomb and destroy the Modi-led BJP. An analysis of past elections' trend reveals that his claims are bereft of any basis," Rao claimed.

He cited the blows inflicted on the Congress by a number of regional leaders, such as Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, Jyoti Basu and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, Lalu Prasad in Bihar, and M Karunanidhi and M K Stalin in Tamil Nadu, since 1984 to ask if Gandhi will label these leaders as "vote chor".

Similarly, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and JMM leader Shibu Soren and then his son Heman Soren were instrumental in growing their parties at the expense of the Congress in Delhi and Jharkhand, respectively, over the last few decades, he added.

Noting that it was the V P Singh-led Janata Dal which was pivotal in reducing the Congress tally to 191 in the 1989 elections, triggering a decades-long spell of decline for the party, he asked if Gandhi would consider Singh as "vote chor number 1".

In many of these states, the Congress has been unable to recover and remains an "irrelevant" player, he added.

The Congress' national vote-share in the 1989 polls was 39.5 per cent, and since then, 36.6, 28.8, 25.8, 28.3, 26.5, 28.6, 19.5, 19.7 and 21.4 per cent till 2024 -- an overall declining arc despite minor bumps in between.

While a galaxy of leaders and parties caused the decline of the Congress party for three decades, Modi, after becoming prime minister, drove the "proverbial final nail in the coffin" by "decimating" the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha and then again in 2019 and 2024, Rao said.

He added, "It is high time the Congress party realises that fake narratives and 'shoot and scoot' politics may give it instant visibility and even appeal to rabid elements amongst its ranks, but can neither erase nor alter historical facts."