Rahul Gandhi
Bengaluru: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said everybody knows who the winner is when someone stands against India and nobody has been able to fight the idea of India. Addressing the media here after deliberations between opposition leaders for the second day, Gandhi said the 2024 Lok Sabha polls are going to be a fight between “INDIA” and Narendra Modi.
The opposition has named its alliance as INDIA — the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance — as announced at the press conference after the meeting of the parties.
“All of you know who wins when anyone stands against India…. There is no need to spell it out,” Gandhi said. The former Congress chief also said it is known to everyone what happens to those who oppose or attempt to fight the idea of India.
“You can look in our history and you will see that nobody has been able to fight the idea of India. So I do not need to go into who is going to win this fight. This is a fight between the idea of India and the idea of the BJP…. This is a fight between INDIA and the BJP…. It is a fight between INDIA and Mr Narendra Modi,” he said.
Gandhi also said Tuesday’s opposition meeting, the second in a series, was very successful and things moved “very smoothly” during the deliberations that lasted for more than four hours.
He said the idea of India is being attacked today by the ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The wealth of the country is being snatched from the millions and millions of countrymen and handed over to a few businessmen “who are close to the prime minister and the BJP”, the Congress leader alleged.
Noting that unemployment is spreading and prices are rising, he said this is what the fight is all about.
“The fight is about two different ideas of India and while we were having this discussion … this name frankly emerged from the discussion because we asked ourselves what is the fight … whom is the fight between?
“We realised that the fight is not between two political formations…. The fight is to defend the idea of India and that is why, we came up with the name — Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, which also happens to stand for INDIA and what we are doing here as a group,” the former Congress chief said.
Gandhi also said “we are defending the Indian Constitution, the voice of the Indian people, the idea of our great country … the idea of India”. He said the third opposition meeting will be held in Maharashtra, where some key decisions will be taken.
“All of us have decided that we will prepare an action plan and move forward together and tell people about our ideology and what we plan to do for the country,” Gandhi said.
He thanked all the leaders for attending the meeting. Subsequently, in a tweet in Hindi, Gandhi said: “Bharat will be united, INDIA will win.”
