Reverse countdown has begun for Modi govt, says Congress as Rahul Gandhi leads attack

The CWC is meeting two days after Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Parliament during a debate on the no-confidence motion

The Congress has to fight for India’s oppressed, said party president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday as top leaders accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of compromising India’s democracy and depriving the poor.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Ghulam Nabi Azad at the first meeting of the newly constituted Congress Working Committee.(Congress/Twitter)

UPA chairperson and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi cautioned about “the reign of despair and fear heaped upon India’s deprived and poor” at a meeting of the newly constituted Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s top decision-making body, to discuss the political situation in the country and draw up the party’s strategy for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

“We have to rescue our people from a dangerous regime that is compromising with the democracy of India,” Sonia was quoted by PTI as saying. She said the “reverse countdown” of the Modi government has begun.

She also insisted that the UPA will work effectively. “We are committed to make alliance work and we are with the Congress president in this endeavour,” she said

Rahul Gandhi described the Congress as the “voice of India” and said the party had a responsibility towards the present and the future.

““Rahul Gandhi reminds qua the role of Congress as the voice of India as also its responsibility of present and future, as BJP attacks institutions, dalits, tribals, backwards, minorities & poor,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted.

“Rahul Gandhi calls the newly constituted CWC as an institution comprising of experience and energy, as a bridge between the past, present and the future. Calls upon Congressmen/women to rise and fight for India’s oppressed,” Surjewala said in another tweet.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Prime Minister Modi following a culture of constant “self praise and jumlas (theatrics)”.

The former PM said the claim of doubling farm income by 2022 will require an agricultural growth rate of 14 per cent, which is nowhere in sight.

Dr Singh also assured Rahul Gandhi that he and all other Congressmen will help him to restore India’s social harmony and economic development.

“I assure Rahul Gandhiji that we will fully support him in his onerous task of restoring India’s social harmony and economic development,” he said.

The CWC is meeting two days after Rahul’s speech in Parliament during a debate on the no-confidence motion. The Congress president launched a blistering attack on Modi and later, in an unprecedented move, gave him a hug.

Gandhi’s aggressive speech has buoyed the Congress with its leaders expressing confidence that he will pose a formidable challenge to Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.