'Close' fight in Raj but will win MP, C'garh: Cong

NT Correspondent

New Delhi: Exuding confidence about a good showing in the upcoming assembly polls, Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said that as of now the Congress is certainly winning Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, probably winning Telangana, and there is a "very close" contest in Rajasthan which the party believes it will emerge victorious in.

The senior Congress leader also referred to the row over BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri's derogatory remarks against BSP leader Danish Ali in Lok Sabha, alleging that the BJP indulges in such tactics to distract from the demand for a caste census.

He asserted that the opposition is adapting and working together and the BJP is "in for a surprise in 2024" general elections.

Speaking at a conclave organised by the Pratidin Media Network of Assam, Gandhi also said the idea of 'One Nation, One Election' was aimed at distracting from real issues of the people.

The main issues in India are concentration of wealth, huge inequality in wealth, massive unemployment, huge unfairness towards thethe lower caste, OBCs, and tribal communities, and price rise, he said.

Assembly polls are scheduled to take place in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram. The Congress learnt a very important lesson in Karnataka that the BJP wins elections by "distracting and not allowing us to construct our narrative and so we fought the polls constructing our party's narrative".

"If you look at the Telangana polls, we are controlling the narrative, the BJP is not even in the narrative, it is gone. The BJP has been decimated and it is over in Telangana," Gandhi said.

He claimed that the Congress is controlling the narrative in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the run-up to the polls there. "If you speak to people in Rajasthan on what is the issue in terms of antiincumbency, they will tell you they like the government," he said.

Gandhi also said that the women's reservation bill can be implemented "tomorrow morning" and all that is required to be done is to state that 33 per cent of the seats will be reserved in the Lok Sabha and assemblies.

Talking about the 2024 general elections, Gandhi said the opposition is thinking about this election in a fundamentally different way.

"The opposition is united in the idea that India is now under attack. The concept of India, of free elections, of free speech - they are now under mortal threat. This thinking is unanimous among us all, which means we have to be flexible and we have to fight for the soul of India, which requires a different level of cooperation," he said.