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Rahul Gandhi shares dais with Hardik Patel, attacks PM Modi
Ahmedabad: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of creating “two Indias” -- one of a select few billionaires and the other for the common people
Ahmedabad: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of creating “two Indias” -- one of a select few billionaires and the other for the common people.
Speaking at an ‘Adivasi Satyagrah Sammelan’ in Dahod district of Gujarat, Gandhi expressed confidence of a victory in the assembly elections due in the state later this year.
“The BJP government will not give you anything. Instead, they will take everything you have. You (tribals) have to grab your rights and only then will you get what is essentially yours,” he said, sharing the dais with state Congress working president Hardik Patel, who has been accusing the state party leadership of ignoring him.
“Today, two Indias are being created, one is of the rich, a few select people, billionaires and bureaucrats who have power and money. The second India is of the common people,” he said
The Congress party does not want two Indias but equality for everyone, he added.
The state’s tribal belt has been a stronghold for the Congress since Independence. In 2017, the party won 15 seats in the region of the 27 seats reserved for scheduled tribe (ST) candidates while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 9.
The Congress won 77 seats in the 182-member legislative assembly in the 2017 elections but since then, at least 13 party legislators have switched to the BJP. In the tribal belt Congress and BJP are neck-in-neck with 12 seats each.
Gandhi’s visit to the state comes amid a spate of defections. Recently, tribal MLA Ashwin Kotwal resigned from the party and switched to the saffron party. The Chhotu Vasava-led Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP), with whom the Congress had an alliance in the 2017 polls, recently joined hands with the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party. BTP won two seats in the tribal belt in the 2017 elections.
On Monday, Shweta Brahmbhatt, who contested on a Congress ticket from Maninagar in 2017, resigned from the party and joined the BJP. An investment banker by profession, 38-year-old Brahmbhatt cited “groupism” and “lack of vision” in the party as the reason behind her resignation.
At the Dahod rally, all 64 MLAs of the party were present. Congress working president Patel, who recently said that he was unhappy with the state leadership, in his speech at Dahod said he was confident that the Congress will defeat BJP in the upcoming elections.
State BJP spokesperson Yamal Vyas said: “It seems that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi does not seem to know the ground realities of Gujarat. It is election tourism for him and the Congress. In these five years, their leaders did not look at Gujarat and now, when elections are near, he has suddenly started visiting the state and making all sorts of baseless allegations.”
