Rahul says no alliance for Congress in UP polls

LUCKNOW: The Congress will go it alone in the Uttar Pradesh election due early next year, party vicepresident Rahul Gandhi has said.

Gandhi is on a 2,500-km ‘Kisan Yatra’ across Uttar Pradesh, seeking to revive the Congress in a bellwether state it dominated before regional parties built along caste lines displaced it from power 27 years ago and left it a marginal player.

But Gandhi ruled out any opportunistic election alliances with other parties. “I feel the Congress should stand on its own and fight the 2017 assembly elections on the basis of its ideology and policies without compromising with them,” he told HT in an interview.

Gandhi spoke on a wide range of issues — from questioning the BJP-led central government’s policies that he said promoted businesses above farmers to accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of botching up his response to violence in Kashmir and in dealing with Pakistan.

He also called the Jammu and Kashmir’s ruling PDP-BJP alliance a “crime against India” that had created a space for Pakistan in the troubled region, and said Modi does not listen to the counsel of experts or ministers who understand the problem.

Gandhi, 46, is campaigning through 26 districts of the state whose chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is trying to beat back a power struggle in his Samajwadi Party just months before the election.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 >> FULL INTERVIEW ON P9

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