Rahul spells out idea of India in 2019 pitch
ALL INCLUSIVE Cong believes in 1.3bn imaginations, BJP in only one BATTLE READY Ready to be PM if that’s what the alliance partners want BSP TIEUP State, central polls are different, Maya will join forces with us
NEWDELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi blew the poll bugle on Friday, drawing the battle lines for the 2019 general election, which he said would be a fight between the perceived authoritarianism of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the liberalism he claimed was represented by the 132-year-old Congress. He also attacked the ruling dispensation for undermining social harmony and institutional autonomy.
Gandhi, the keynote speaker on the first day of the twoday 16th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, said the ruling dispensation had “gone to war” with its own people, adding that the country was paying the price for the politics of hatred.
The NDA is trying to refashion the diverse nation of 1.3 billion people in the mould of one singular “imagination”, he said. The Congress, for its part, would initiate a conversation between all sections of the society and in the economic domain, Gandhi said, reaching out to industrialists in an attempt to allay their concerns about his outlook for the economy.
The Congress chief drew a clear distinction between the NDA’S vision of India and that of his own party at the event where he spoke about issues ranging from the economy and foreign policy to similarities and differences between his styles of functioning and that of his mother. “It (NDA government) wants to impose one singular, suffocating memory on our 1.3 billion memories. The Congress vision of India is of 1.3 billion imaginations,” Gandhi said.