Rahul Gandhi said that G-23 is not present in any party except Congress

New Delhi While making his first public comment on the group of 23 dissidents (G-23), former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that such a group cannot exist in any other political party except the Congress.

In a virtual conversation with faculty and students of Brown University of America, run by Professor Ashutosh Varshney, Mr. Gandhi spoke on a range of issues, including the time for the Gandhi family to step aside from leadership positions. .

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Talking about the inclusive nature of the Congress that allows dialogue and negotiation, Mr. Gandhi said, “For example, there are 20 people, a group of 23 people, who have a different view on the Congress. Do you think he can be present in BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], Bsp [Bahujan Samaj Party], Trinamool Congress?

“No, they cannot exist in any other party. The Congress says ‘See we do not agree with you but cannot stop the conversation’. It has to go ahead and it is the nature of the Congress, ”he said in response to a question from Leela Gandhi, a faculty member.

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Mr Gandhi’s remarks came only a few weeks after the G-23 showed strength in Jammu on 27 February as a sign of his contempt. Although the party did not comment on their Jammu meeting, it indicated this by not including most of the key G-23 members in the party’s star campaigners list for the upcoming elections.

In response to another observation about the absence of a strong opposition from the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and if the Gandhi family should allow the new leadership to flourish with the Congress, Mr. Gandhi said that no one in his family has been Prime Minister since 1989 Used to be.

Also Read: Congress Overhaul: G23 Letter Writers Retain Positions and Achieve More

“I have a role in the Congress party. I defend a particular ideological stream in the Congress Party and I firmly believe in that. I’m certainly not going to say, ‘Okay thanks a lot! Now I will not defend this ideological position in Congress just because someone says that I can be like this and therefore son, ”said the former Congress chief. He said that he is the only leader who takes on Mr. Modi every day.

The Congress leader reiterated that the new party chief should be elected through the election route.

In the one-and-a-half-hour conversation, Mr. Gandhi spoke of changing political discourse in India since 2014, the loss of democratic institutions and the control of political narratives by controlling social media giants like BJP’s Facebook and WhatsApp. Attacking the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), he compared the organization with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.