Team Herald
NEW DELHI: Sonia Gandhi, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson, on Thursday cautioned the party MPs to be prepared for an early Lok Sabha elections as done by then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
“We have to be in a state of readiness for the national elections which are due in slightly over a year — and might well be called earlier as they were in 2004,” she said in an address to the parliamentary party meeting, stressing that “no doubt 2014 was a severe setback, but I am convinced that it was an aberration.”
She said increasingly the people belonging to all sections of society are getting disillusioned with the presence regime and it is for the Congress to channel this discontent into support. “We must not only highlight the abject failures of the Modi government but more importantly, build a positive and credible narrative for ourselves on issues of public concern.
As for her future role, Sonia said she would work with Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other colleagues for discussions with the like-minded political parties “to ensure that in the next election, the BJP is defeated and India is restored to a democratic, inclusive, secular, tolerant and economically progressive path.
She talked of the coming “winds of change,” pointing out that “we performed very creditably under tough circumstances in Gujarat and the recent by-election results in Rajasthan were huge….Very soon, the election results in Karnataka too will underline the resurgence of the Congress.”
Expressing concern that all institutions that are the foundation of the democracy–Parliament, judiciary, media and civil society–coming under systematic assault in almost four years of the present government, she said an all-pervasive atmosphere of fear and intimidation has been created and liberal, secular and democratic traditions are being wantonly damaged.
Sonia debunked “tall claims” of the so-called economic achievements, saying the reality is quit different. Agriculture continues to be in deep distress and the desperation of farmers is sadly evident in the number of suicides.
Pointing out the new programmes and initiatives unveiled by the government so often “with the flourish of a magician,” she said in reality, they are simply recycled schemes that were launched during the UPA government.
“True, the new names are catchy and colourful, perhaps much more so than during our time, we must admit. But this seems to be a game of ‘maximum publicity, minimum government’ or put another way, ‘maximum marketing, minimum delivery,” Sonia said, noting that India had accomplished just nothing before May 2014 if this government is to be believed.
“The arrogance and dishonesty of this tells us that the Modi government is out of touch with reality, and lives by its own propaganda and lies. We need no further evidence of this than the Prime Minister’s speech in the Lok Sabha yesterday (Wednesday) morning,” she said.
She spoke of “a deeply troubled country and deeply trouble people,” noting that the minorities feel unsafe as subjected to barbarous attacks, dalits under renews and widespread atrocities as have women. “In many cases, this violence, specially against minorities and dalits is not sporadic or random, but orchestrated to polarise our society for narrow political gains. Such polarisation is criminal in a democracy, yet those in power look the other way. We saw this in both UP and Gujarat. We will no doubt see it again in Karnataka,” she added.
