Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who on Friday held a press conference in Jaipur on the occasion of the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ completing 100 days, said that if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had not been “put up as a proxy to target” his party, they would have won the recently concluded Gujarat assembly elections. He also attacked the saffron camp by alleging that the grand old party defeated their organisational and money power to emerge victorious in the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls.
“We are different from the large number of opposition parties. We work with them, we appreciate them, we believe they are important, but we are different. The way we are different is that we represent a national ideology. We represent a vision for the country,” Gandhi told reporters at the press briefing.
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He said that a regional party can represent a vision for a community or state but cannot do so for a country.
AAP MP and party’s national spokesperson Raghav Chadha took an aim at Gandhi for his statement on Twitter. “Just how the Congress defeated BJP several times in the last 27 years in Gujarat,” his post on the micro-blogging site read.
Gandhi also mentioned ‘two Indias’ in his speech, saying one is what the BJP-RSS are trying to propose that defines hate, arrogance, presence of only “one language, state, culture and religion”. He added that the Congress wants to promote affection, humbleness, and a country where people embrace and reach out to each other.
“The space for the Congress party will always be there and the people who believe in the [it] will always be there. It is a question of getting them excited, getting them motivated and getting them to believe in what they stand for, which the (Bharat Jodo) yatra has been very, very good at doing,” Gandhi said.
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When asked if the ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party can reconcile with some prominent regional parties such as the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the AAP, Gandhi said that the question needs to be asked to the “party’s president (Mallikarjun Kharge)”.
“I have a view that the Congress party must work with all the oppostion parties. There is a lot of space for that. But the exact strategy…how it is going to be done, you have to ask to the Congress president. I am actually not involved in that right now,” he said.
The BJP registered a record victory in Gujarat, winning 156 of 182 seats – beating Congress’ earlier held feat in the 1985 assembly elections in the state. The grand old party could manage to win only 17 seats, which was a massive dip from 77 in 2017. The AAP claimed as many as five constituencies.
