Venkaiah Naidu: ‘Party-hopping a disturbing trend … first you praise new leader, then you abuse previous leader’

President Droupadi Murmu confers Padma Vibhushan on former vice president M Venkaiah Naidu during Padma Awards 2024 ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi, April 22, 2024. (PTI)

The former Vice President said that although changing parties was permitted in a democracy, the leader should resign from all posts they received in the party before jumping ship. “I can understand about accusations but using abusive language should be avoided,” Naidu said. The former Vice President pointed out that he had stuck to one party — the BJP — in his political career of five decades.

The former vice president’s remarks come at a time when the BJP has inducted a battery of leaders from various parties, mainly the Congress, and fielded them in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. More than a quarter of the BJP’s 433 candidates have been inducted from other parties. Though fewer, there have been a handful of BJP MPs who have moved the other way and joined the Congress — such as Ajay Nishad in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur and Rahul Kaswan in Churu, Rajasthan — in this election season.

Naidu, who has also served as Union Minister and was the BJP’s national president from 2002 to 2004, said the trend of political parties announcing freebies was an “unhealthy trend”. According to him, parties when announcing schemes should specify how they will fund them.

“People are promising schemes left and right … Paisa kahan hai (where is the money)? They should explain. I am against freebies. I would say only education and health should be free. All other freebies should be discouraged,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has targeted freebies in the past, labelling them “revdi culture”. But the BJP in its manifestos in last year’s state elections announced a range of welfare schemes that, party leaders admitted, have helped it win Assembly polls, including Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh last year.