Sonia hits out at Modi, vows reforms in Cong
UDAIPUR: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “being silent when a healing touch is most needed”, intimidating political opponents and carrying out “wholesale re-invention of history” apart from maligning Jawaharlal Nehru.
Inaugurating the party’s ‘Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir’ in Udaipur, Gandhi also said that the Congress is in “urgent need of reforms”. “Change in our strategy, structural reforms and even changes in the way we work every day are required and these are fundamental issues,” she said. Gandhi’s attacks on the PM and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were in sync with the overall approach of the Chintan Shivir (brainstorming session) that aims to revamp the Congress with an eye on the 2024 elections. It was also a bid to show that the Congress is fighting back after losses in 10 state assembly polls in the last 13 months. Taking a jibe at Modi’s pet slogan of “minimum government, maximum governance”, Gandhi said, “It means more empty slogans, diversionary tactics and utter silence on the part of an ever-so-eloquent Prime Minister when a healing touch is most needed,” in an apparent reference to the economic woes triggered by food inflation and high fuel prices.
Gandhi alleged that the PM and the ruling side were “keeping the country in a state of permanent polarisation, compelling our people to live in a constant state of fear and insecurity”. She accused Modi and the government of “viciously targeting, victimising and often brutalising minorities” and “threatening and intimidating political opponents, maligning their reputations, jailing them on flimsy pretexts, and misusing investigative agencies against them.”
Gandhi spoke about how the BJP government’s faulty policies have led to economic woes. She said the public sector companies set up by Congress governments were being sold off to select industrialists. Alongside this frontal attack against the Centre, Gandhi was equally mindful of the uphill task of reviving the Congress. “The circumstances that have arisen before our organisation today are unprecedented. Extraordinary situations can be dealt with only in extraordinary ways,” she said, underling the occasion for chintan as well as atma-chintan (self-introspection). Sonia reminded the party that every organisation needs to change itself with time, and reiterated that it’s time to repay the debt of the party and keep personal ambitions subservient to collective changes.