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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses the party workers during a public meeting, in Mumbai on Friday.
| Photo Credit: ANI
INDIA bloc’s electoral success will entirely depend on how successfully it is able to unravel the three illusions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said at the alliance’s meeting on Friday.
Mr. Gandhi was one of the last to speak at the meeting. According to informed sources, he said Mr. Modi had successfully weaved wrong perceptions about himself and his government. The first of which was that Mr. Modi was not corrupt and the government run by him was also free of corruption. But it was not the case, Mr. Gandhi said, pointing to the Hindenburg report and the recent news stories in Financial Times and The Guardian, which, he said, had clearly established Mr. Modi’s role in the unprecedented growth of industrialist Gautam Adani over a short period of time. INDIA bloc must take this to the people, the Congress leader said.
The second “wrong perception”, Mr. Gandhi said was that Mr. Modi had improved India’s standing in the world, which again was “false”. He pointed out the example of administrative paralysis over the Chinese incursions in Ladakh.
The third illusion, Mr. Gandhi said, that Mr. Modi had effectively created was to fashion himself as a champion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs). “We need to expose the fact that in nine years in power, he has done only lip service for the community and has nothing substantial to show for it,” a source said, quoting Mr. Gandhi. The Congress has been demanding the need to have a country-wide caste census to assess the impact of government policies on the community, with Mr. Gandhi being one of the first to raise the demand.
Speaking at the press conference after the conclusion of the meeting, Mr. Gandhi said pointing at the leaders from INDIA parties sitting on the dias, “This stage represents 60% of the Indian population. If these parties unite, it will be impossible for the BJP to win elections.”
The Congress leader also spoke at length about the Indo-China conflict and his trip to Ladakh. He accused the Modi government of colluding with the Chinese counterparts and “accommodating” them.
“The people who live around Pangong Tso Lake categorically told me that the Chinese have taken Indian land. They categorically told me that the Prime Minister is lying about the fact that the Chinese have not taken Indian land,” Mr. Gandhi said. Every person in Ladakh, he said, knows that the people of Ladakh have been “betrayed by the Government of India”. “There is clearly an accommodation that has happened between the government and the Chinese. There is clearly a change on the borders,” the Congress leader added.
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