familiar music, but no panel tonight. one leader, one after another, facing a live audience for half an hour each. and first, the prime minister asked about the story we brought you throughout the day. aren t the emerging allegations about betting on the election date the absolute epitome of the lack of ethics that we have had to tolerate from the conservative party for years and years. like you, i was incredibly angry, incredibly angry to learn of these allegations. it is a really serious matter. it is right they are being investigated properly but you are happy not to suspend them, to let them carry on and go on in the election? obviously, they have not admitted anything, no one is saying a decision has been taken about their guilt or innocence, but you are happy for them to go into the election and represent you and the conservative party? fiona, as you said, these investigations are ongoing, but what i can tell you, if anyone is found to have broken the rules, not only wi
welcome to hardtalk. thank you. the recent indian election, it was a result which nobody really expected. your party, the congress party, did better than the polls had suggested it would. many in your party expressed contentment, evenjoy. and yet you still lost. isn t that the key point? that is true. but i think the expectation from the ruling dispensation, a lot of the popular mainstream media was that the propaganda will suffice and people will give a bigger majority to the ruling party. what really happened was, this was a vote by the people to check what we thought were excesses by the government, and the congress party and our allies together have done remarkably well, compared to last time. if you look at the numbers, the ruling party has 290 odd mps and we have 240 odd. so it s not that much of a gap. but more than that, it shows the robustness of our democracy, and the way people have voted is that issues that are important to the people is what finally matters. sure