Senior Congress leader and Union minister M. Veerappa Moily on Monday termed the Hisar Lok Sabha bypoll result as a "defeat" for Anna Hazare, saying if corruption had been the issue the result would have been different.
"You should know if Anna's appeal has worked. It has worked against him because I don't want to comment on the person who has won. It is the matter of those people who elected him. The big question is whether the cause of Anna Hazare has been served by the result of the election. That is the question he has to answer, people have to answer," Moily told media persons on the sidelines of a programme here. India's ruling Congress finished third in the Hisar Lok Sabha byelection in Haryana where Anna Hazare had campaigned against it.
The party also lost the other three assembly byelections in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra on Monday. Of the four states, the Congress is in power in all except Bihar. In Hisar, the Haryana Janhit Congress' (HJC) Kuldeep Singh Bishnoi triumphed, while the Indian National Lok Dal candidate came second and the state's ruling Congress third.
"If you want to make a study of the poll result, the question is for Anna Hazare or his team or for the nation to judge whether it has served the cause that is very dear to him, namely corruption." "If corruption is an issue I don't think this kind of result can happen. Notwithstanding the corruption issue the result has come. If corruption was an issue, the Congress candidate should have won. That means it is not victory of Anna Hazare, rather it is his defeat."
Moily also rubbished queries that Hazare could pose problems for the Congress in the near future. "The Congress party has seen more than 130 years. You know when the British empire was not a problem then how can one individual or a group of individuals be a problem for the Congress. There is an inbuilt capacity in the Congress to face any tsunami or turbulence and it can come out successfully," said Moily.