New Delhi: Congress’s North East Delhi candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections Kanhaiya Kumar has said that the biggest issue in this election is the way in which tanashahi (dictatorship) is rising in the country as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attempts to wipe out the opposition.In an interview with The Wire on the campaign trail, Kumar said that in order to rise against the BJP’s dictatorship, the opposition has joined hands in the form of the INDIA alliance.“The biggest issue is the way in which tanashahi is rising. The voice of the democracy, those who are peace loving, justice loving, those who want progress – for them the biggest issue is the manner in which the BJP wants to wipe out the opposition and practise a kind of politics where there is no opposition at all and that is why all INDIA alliance parties have come together against this tanashahi.”Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyThe former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president had made headlines as a firebrand student leader after the 2016 sedition row. In 2018, he had joined the Communist Party of India and contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Bihar’s Begusarai where he lost to BJP MP Giriraj Singh. In 2021, he switched to the Congress and has now been fielded by the party as the INDIA alliance candidate in North East Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress are fighting the elections together in the national capital, contesting four and three seats each.Refuting allegations levelled by his opponent and sitting North East Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari of being an “outsider” in the constituency, Kumar said that while he is from Bihar, so is Tiwari.“Manoj Tiwari himself is from Bihar. Narendra Modi is fighting the election from Varanasi even though he is from Gujarat. These allegations won’t stick,” he said.Kumar’s candidature comes amidst a churn in the Delhi Congress following the resignation of former party president Arvinder Singh Lovely over tickets being distributed to “strangers” Kumar and Udit Raj (North West Delhi candidate). While Lovely has since joined the BJP, former Congress MLAs Raj Kumar Chauhan, Neeraj Basoya and Naseeb Singh who quit the party criticising the alliance with AAP have also joined the saffron party.Read the full interview below, edited lightly for language and brevity.This is the second time you are contesting the Lok Sabha elections. What is the difference between the 2019 and 2024 elections?The biggest difference this time is that the last time we were fighting elections on our own, and this time we are part of the INDIA alliance and I am the Congress party’s candidate. In the previous election the biggest challenge that I faced was that voters were thinking that if the BJP has to be defeated, who will defeat them? This time there is no such confusion. Those who support BJP and still want the BJP [in power] are separate, but those who had voted for the BJP in 2014 and 2019 and who are not satisfied with the BJP’s work and feel that it has not fulfilled its promises, now they have a single option in the form of the INDIA alliance candidate – me – so the challenge is not as big as last timeYou are facing Manoj Tiwari. He’s the only MP who has been repeated by the BJP here in Delhi. How will you pose a challenge to him?Who the BJP decides to make their candidate or not is the BJP’s internal matter. I don’t want to comment on that. But if you go to the constituency, you will see that the elections are changing everyday. In their arrogance of being in power or overconfidence, they have made him a candidate here again, but maybe they will realise that when they changed six (MPs), they should have changed him as well.You have said that this is a fight to save the Constitution. What is the biggest election issue according to you?The biggest issue is the way in which tanashahi is rising. The voice of the democracy, those who are peace loving, justice loving, those who want progress – for them the biggest issue is the manner in which the BJP wants to wipe out the opposition and practise a kind of politics where there is no opposition at all, and that is why all INDIA alliance parties have come together against this tanashahi. But if we speak about the constituency here, roads are a big issue, traffic jams, you can see how there is water logging on the roads, law and order – [these] are the big issues.Kanhaiya Kumar on the campaign trail. Photo: Anuvrat ShokeenIf we talk about this constituency, you have been called an ‘outsider’ here, someone who doesn’t belong to this constituency. How do you respond to that?It is true that I am an outsider and I hail from Bihar. But the question is who is raising this allegation? Manoj Tiwari himself is from Bihar. Narendra Modi is fighting the election from Varanasi even though he is from Gujarat. These allegations won’t stick.Your candidature has been criticised by former Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely in his resignation letter, saying that an outsider has been given a ticket. He has also criticised the Congress’s alliance with the AAP. There were protests by Congress workers also outside the Congress office against your candidature. How do you respond to this?Those are his views, it is not my responsibility to respond to him. Responding to his allegations is the responsibility lies with the central leadership.So has this impacted the alliance with AAP?There has been no impact on the alliance with AAP at all.