Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

deal.

In an aggressive speech, Modi sought to counter charges levelled by the Congress and said that in an election year, “leaders are bound by a compulsion to make all kinds of charges”.

Modi sought to play up his humble beginnings and status as an outsider in Delhi to attack the Congress. “The root of the problem is that a poor man who has never seen the streets of Delhi has done so much, that they can’t digest. The Congress has been tied to power. This intoxication is creating a problem.”

He chose to call emerging and newfound Opposition unity as “maha-milawat gathbandan” or an “adulterated alliance”. He said Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, wanted the Congress disbanded after Independence and it was he who wanted a Congress-mukt Bharat (Congressfree India). “I’m just fulfilling that dream of his.”

He also said Babasaheb Ambedkar once said that “joining the Congress was like committing suicide”. NEW DELHI: In her first official meeting, the Congress’s newly appointed general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday told her party colleagues she had vowed to fight the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh east was attending a meeting of general secretaries and state incharges at the party headquarters at 24, Akbar Road.

In her first intervention at the meeting, Priyanka Gandhi said the “ideology and thought process” of the RSS-BJP combine needed to be countered, according to three functionaries present at the meeting.

Priyanka Gandhi, 47, also said she is new and inexperienced but asserted that she will give her best.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, for his part, said he did not expect a “miracle” from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Jyotiraditya Scindia, party general secretary incharge of Uttar Pradesh west, in two months, and that they should not feel any pressure.