'This majority is just for show': BJP puts up brave face on Uttarakhand crisis

New Delhi: Stunned by the Uttarakhand developments where the Congress returned to power, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday sought to put up a brave front and claimed that the Congress’s jubilation in the hill state will be “short lived”. “Yeh dikahane ka bahumat hai (This majority is just for show),” BJP leader Shrikant Sharma said outside Parliament. “It will be short-term glory. They have already lost the confidence of the people of Uttarakhand. Congress’s majority in the state assembly was a result of purchase and sale of elected members as was clearly demonstrated by the sting operations,” Sharma said. [caption id=“attachment_2776894” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Harish Rawat. File photo. PTI[/caption] He asserted that in contrast to the claims of the Congress party, the crisis in the Harish Rawat government in March was due to “internal problems in their party”. “We had nothing to do with it. If the state’s chief minister (Rawat) had respect for parliamentary democracy, he would have tendered his resignation on 18 March itself when the budget could not be passed,” Sharma said. Joining issue with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his comments on the turn of events in Uttarakhand, Sharma said, “A party that scored a century by abusing and misusing Article 356 should not lecture the country about democracy.” He said, “The celebrations and fire crackers in Uttarakhand will be short-lived because these are artificial. The celebrations are only efforts to conceal the fact that the liquor mafia and sand mafia were involved in saving the Harish Rawat government”.