Amid raging speculation that Rahul Gandhi would not contest the Lok Sabha elections from the family's traditional stronghold in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, the Congress leader said he would follow the orders from the party president.
“Whatever the Congress president decides for me, I will follow. In our party, such decisions are taken in the Central Election Committee meeting,” Rahul said at a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav at Kosambi on April 17.
Read: A confident Smriti Irani waits for Cong to name rival in Amethi
Once a Gandhi family bastion, Amethi seems to be charting a course independent of the first family of the Grand Old Party. The first signs of things to come were visible in 2014 when the BJP’s Smriti Irani, fighting her first election, gave a scare to Rahul in Amethi.
Five years later, in the 2019 Lok Sabah elections, Irani beat Rahul by 468,514 votes. She has again been fielded from Amethi this time.
The former Congress president said the election would be an ideological battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent ideologue Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the opposition INDIA bloc.
Read more: Congress attacks BJP over 'paper leaks' in Uttar Pradesh ahead of LS polls
He alleged that the party in power is going all out to dismantle the Constitution, while INDIA constituents are working to defend it.
“We are making concerted efforts to highlight several burning issues including unemployment, inflation, and participation of all communities, but the BJP round the clock is into distracting people,” Rahul said.
"Sometimes the prime minister goes down to the sea and sometimes he is up in the skies in a seaplane, but he never dares to speak on the issues that are affecting people’s lives," he said.
“We saw him giving a scripted interview to ANI, which turned out to be a flop show. He tried his best to make people understand about electoral bonds and called its inception to bring transparency. Had it been so, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have struck it down.”
He alleged that PM Narendra Modi’s party also tried to hide the details of electoral bond donors, and it is now open that donations have been made by people who have been raided by the central investigating agencies.
“The whole country is aware of the fact that Narendra Modi is the champion of corruption,” he added.
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