Turnaround in UP must for Cong revival: Rahul

Jaswinder Singh Baidwan

Akhran da mureed
Staff member
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today said there was a need to revitalise the party for the Uttar Pradesh electoral battle of 2017. Addressing a “Pratinidhi Sammelan” in Hema Malini’s parliamentary constituency, Rahul declared that only a turnaround in Uttar Pradesh could ensure the Congress’ revival across India.
Confessing to a shift in his attitude towards party workers in the recent months, he said, “Earlier, I considered Congress workers as an army with generals and soldiers. Everyone was given a specific task and if he failed to deliver, he was asked to step aside.”
“A few months ago, my views witnessed a change. Now, I see the party as my family. A person who cannot satisfactorily deliver a certain task would be allotted another duty according to his aptitude. But no one can be thrown out, just like a family,” he said.
He urged Congress workers to attempt to regain the lost ground in Uttar Pradesh by imbibing “team culture”. Reiterating the difference between the RSS and the Congress, he said the party should allow people to have different ideologies, unlike the RSS.
“If this were the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat would declare the sky to be black and you all would salute in agreement,” he said.
He said the Congress might be number four in terms of the seats in Uttar Pradesh, but it remained number one in terms of ideology. Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said he had harmed himself by making false promises of “achhe din”. The farmers were not only critical of Modi, but also abusive for a U-turn on the land Bill, he said.
Rahul, one of the only two Congress MPs from Uttar Pradesh, asked why Modi had not kept his promise of recovering black money stashed abroad and giving Rs 15 lakh out of it to each Indian. “Rs.15 lakh was to come into the account of every Indian. No one has got it," he said.
"The harm Modiji is doing to himself, even we cannot do it together... Modiji will go down," he said. He said the Congress was the fourth party in Uttar Pradesh as far as the number of legislators was concerned but it was the "number one party" in terms of ideology.
 
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