A screengrab of the video starring Gourav Vallabh and Newslaundry's Shivnarayan Rajpurohit.
Rajasthan 2023

‘Rajasthan BJP leaderless’: Gourav Vallabh on Congress poll promises, paper leak, vision for Udaipur

Gourav Vallabh, Congress national spokesperson, is eyeing the assembly seat from Udaipur City – a BJP stronghold for the past four assembly polls. Amid accusations of being parachuted by the party to contest the Rajasthan polls, he said: “I am confident of victory”. “The Congress will secure around 140 seats in Rajasthan.”

Before this, the Congress leader had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Jharkhand assembly polls from Jamshedpur. Born in Rajasthan’s Pali, he had been working as a professor at steel city’s XLRI prior to joining politics. 

Speaking to Newslaundry, Vallabh said the Rajasthan BJP was “leaderless”. “They (BJP) don’t have answers to my question…don’t have a vision.” He iterated that he had invited Udaipur City’s BJP candidate Tarachand Jain for debate, but the latter “has no answers”. 

On the Rajasthan paper leak scam, he said the Congress had ordered “bulldozer action” against those involved in the scam. “But what about the biggest paper leak scam in the entire world? The ED has not arrested anyone,” he said, referring to the Vyapam Scam in BJP-governed Madhya Pradesh.

What is Vallabh’s vision for Udaipur’s tourism and mining industry? What about the Rajasthan Congress’s criticism over the law and order situation? Are Congress’s big poll promises financially viable? 

Watch.

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