New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has told INDIA bloc partners to adopt a continuous “spirit of resistance” to challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
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The leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha on Friday shared his nine-minute speech to the meeting of INDIA bloc in New Delhi on June 8, on social media.
“I’m sorry to say that there is confusion in this group. The confusion is that you, the SP, the TMC, the RJD believe that the political instruments you have used so far will still work. These only worked when the Indian State provided a fair field for them to operate in. That field does not exist anymore,” he said, arguing that the Opposition must transition from standard electoral politics into an aggressive, mass-mobilisation “resistance movement”.
He also positioned the Congress as the bloc’s anchor to mount a unified front against the BJP, saying that his party was willing to “swallow all poison” and bear any humiliation to keep the Opposition united.
He also reiterated his allegation that the election commission was acting in a partisan manner. He urged all partners to accept, with “100%” certainty, that the elections “were being stolen” and to stop treating it as a matter of doubt.
“I have many friends in the TMC. They were convinced that they were sweeping the election in Bengal. I kept telling them. You’re in dreamland. I have seen what happens. I have seen it in Gujarat. I have seen it in Madhya Pradesh… Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Maharashtra,” he said.
He drew on the Congress party’s own transformation more than 100 years ago as the template for what the alliance must now become. Before 1927, he said, Congress was merely a political organisation.
“The day Gandhi ji said we want independence, we became a resistance movement,” he said, adding that if political parties could no longer function freely, resistance was the only instrument that worked. “Resistance works. Wherever we resist, it works. I have walked 4,000 kilometres across this country,” he said, referencing his Bharat Jodo and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatras.
The BJP hit back at Gandhi, saying that he should first focus on uniting the Congress. In a video statement, BJP spokesperson, Shahzad Poonawalla said, “Rahul Gandhi told the INDI alliance that his job is to unite everyone. But first he should unite his own party. He (Gandhi) says that everyone should work together. Yet, he is the one who betrays allies.”
