Taking a swipe at the BJP, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the fight between the Congress and saffron party was that of ideology. Rahul, who was addressing Congress workers in Jammu said, “You fight for us and this is a fight for ideology…the ideology of the Congress party and that of the RSS.”
Flanked by senior Congress leaders, including party’s national chief Mallikarjun Kharge, J&K unit chief Tariq Hameed Karra and others, Rahul said the party workers had weakened the confidence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Lok Sabha poll.
“The workers of the Congress party have weakened the confidence of the PM of India. I have seen him in the Parliament and I am telling you that his confidence is gone. The PM before the poll was a different person. This is because you people stood with the party flag even as many people fled. This is the reason why I call you the lions of our party,” he said.
He said four states would go to the poll in the coming months, but he and Kharge had decided to go to J&K first. “Not only because of the poll (we wanted to visit here), but we wanted to give a message to the people of J&K and our country that it is for the first time after independence that a state has been downgraded to a Union Territory,” he said.
Rahul further said new states such as Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana were formed to give wider representation to the people of these regions. “UTs have been upgraded to states but a state has never been changed to a UT. J&K is the only example where the representation of people was snatched from them,” he said.
He said since J&K had become a UT, locals were not being given employment opportunities and better means to earn a living. “The locals are not getting any benefit but the outsiders are. Small and big contracts as well as positions in government are being given to the outsiders. This is the reason that before the Assembly elections, statehood should have been granted. We still want that the reins of the state should be given to its people,” he said.
Sharing his personal relation with J&K, he said, “This is not a political but a family relation. So you should keep it in your mind that I am your soldier in Delhi. You just need to give orders to me,” he said. The MP also said he would ask the senior leadership to allocate some Assembly tickets to ground workers as well. “Senior leaders are given tickets during elections but I want that our workers should also get opportunity to contest the elections,” he said.
While interacting with media persons in Srinagar, Rahul said, “It is our priority in the Congress party and INDIA bloc to restore statehood in J&K as soon as possible.”
He said, “We had expected that this would be done prior to the elections, but elections have been declared. It is a step forward, and we are hoping that statehood will be restored as soon as possible and the people of J&K will be given their rights,” he said.
Meanwhile, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said the BJP was harassing the children of Dalits. “The government introduced lateral entry to end the jobs of these children. However, as soon as Rahul and people raised their voice together, the government withdrew the advertisement for lateral entry,” he said.
