Press Note

Press Note

AHMEDABAD: Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who met party leaders in Ahmedabad on Saturday to discuss assembly election results, claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much talked-about Gujarat development model was debunked during the polls.

The Congress chief held zone-wise “introspection meetings” here to ascertain reasons for the party’s defeat.

“You fought very well. We managed to ‘gherao’ the BJP, as you could see that they were not able to give reply to our questions,” Mr Gandhi told party workers.

“Modiji, in the end, spoke about himself, about (former prime minister) Manmohan Singh. But all earlier talk about development and Modi model was debunked by Congress workers and the people of Gujarat,” he said.

“The entire country was asking what happened to the Gujarat model. Modiji would not be able to talk about it in the future,” Mr Gandhi said.

“The question asked three or four months ago was can the Congress fight elections, nobody was talking about us winning it. The Gujarat Congress has shown the entire country that if it fights in one voice on the basis of its ideology, it won’t get defeated,” he said.

“We lost in the elections, but we won. That is the reality. We won because they (the BJP) fought with anger, they had all the equipment, money, chief ministers of different states (to campaign), industrialists, but we had truth,” the Congress chief said.

At one time the BJP said the Congress would get only 15- 20 seats, he said, adding the “new leadership” in the Assembly would bring the Congress to power in Gujarat in 2022.

Mr Gandhi alleged PM Modi and the BJP ran a campaign of “lies and defamation” over the last two decades and it was the “main reason” for the Congress’s defeat in the polls.

“My main challenge was to make the Congress accept that it was going to win the elections. You believed 70 per cent of it, and you saw the results,” he said.

“Now, the Gujarat Congress has regained confidence. You know that the Congress can win elections. Now see the kind of results we will get in the Lok Sabha and next Assembly (polls). It will be a good result, and in the next Assembly we will form the government,” Mr Gandhi said.

“The BJP said it will get 150 seats (in 2017 polls)… We will get 135 seats (in 2022 Gujarat polls),” he said.

Action will be taken against “5-10 per cent” renegade party workers while those who worked with devotion will be rewarded, the Congress chief said.

“You have to show the people of Gujarat that Congress MLAs fight for people’s issues and never backtrack. Whatever we had said about the Gujarat government during the election is true and the fight has not ended yet,” Mr Gandhi said.

“The BJP will run the government of five-ten industrialists and will work to snatch lands from farmers. It is our duty to protect the people of Gujarat, its farmers and youths…We will give a fight to the BJP at every level,” the Congress president said.

Mr Gandhi met newly elected Congress MLAs, defeated candidates and district unit presidents to elicit their views on the results.

The reasons cited by the leaders included late declaration of candidates, lack of management at the local level and lack of state-level coordination, party sources said.

Some leaders also blamed OBC leader Alpesh Thakor over his choice of some candidates, sources said.

In the morning, Mr Gandhi visited the Somnath temple in Gir Somnath district.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/congress-president-rahul-gandhi-we-will-win-135-seats-in-the-2022-gujarat-elections-1791508

A “New India” is where people do not get lynched for the food they eat or for their faith, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said on Saturday, The Times of India reported.

“Four years ago, the prime minister had promised ‘Achhe Din,’” he said at the Times Lit Fest in New Delhi, criticising the Narendra Modi government’s idea of a “New India”, IANS reported. “Now, people openly say, ‘Bure din wapas lao’. No wonder the Bharatiya Janata Party is talking of a New India because they made such a mess of the Old India.”

“I want a New India, too,” he said. “It would be a New India where you don’t get lynched for the food you eat, marginalised for the faith you hold dear, criminalised for the person you love and imprisoned for making use of the fundamental rights guaranteed by your own Constitution.”

“We must look forward to a New India that celebrates and welcomes pluralism,” Tharoor said, and attacked the BJP saying today, “dissent is portrayed as seditious, protests as anti-national”.

“Their ‘New India’ is one where narrow-minded majoritarianism prevails.”

The Congress leader also targeted the government’s policies, including the Goods and Services Tax and demonetisation.

“Demonetisation was like taking out 86% of the blood out of a person’s body and then asking him to dance,” he said. “All available data proves demonetisation was an unmitigated disaster – ill-conceived, unprepared and poorly implemented, a case of all pain no gain.”

On the GST, he said it would have been beneficial if it was really “one nation, one tax”. “Instead, the BJP took the United Progressive Alliance’s design for a sleek horse and produced an ungainly camel,” he said, referring the different tax rates under the new system.

Last week, Tharoor used a tweet to congratulate Manushi Chhillar, who was crowned Miss World, to criticise the government’s decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in 2016. “BJP should have realised that Indian cash dominates the globe: look, even our Chhillar has become Miss World,” he had said on Twitter.

Source: https://scroll.in/latest/859310/narendra-modi-promised-achhe-din-but-now-people-say-bure-din-wapas-lao-shashi-tharoor