BackRahul Gandhi says ‘opposition unity isn't enough’ to defeat BJP in Lok Sabha election 2024: ‘We need an…’
Rahul Gandhi said uniting the opposition is not enough but an alternative vision to the BJP is needed to defeat the party in the next Lok Sabha elections
PremiumSenior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that BJP can be defeated in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections 2024 only if the Opposition is “aligned properly". He also expressed that the grand old party is currently working towards bringing the whole of the Opposition together and it is "coming along very nicely". However, he added that uniting the opposition is not enough but ‘we need an alternative vision to BJP’.
“As a political entrepreneur, I can clearly see vulnerabilities in the BJP... The BJP can be defeated if the Opposition is aligned properly," he said.
“If you look at the Karnataka elections, the general sense is that the Congress Party fought the BJP and defeated the BJP. But what is not well understood is the mechanics that we used," he said.
Rahul Gandhi said this while responding to a question at an event at the Silicon Valley Campus of the University of California in Santa Cruz on Tuesday.
Speaking about the victory in the recent elections, Gandhi said, “The Congress party used a completely different approach to fighting an election and building a narrative. The elements of what happened in Karnataka came out of the Bharat Jodo Yatra."
In the May 10 elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, the Congress won 135 seats, while incumbent BJP and the former prime minister H D Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular) got 66 and 19, respectively.
Country needs an alternative vision to BJP: Rahul Gandhi
He said the country needed an alternative vision to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in addition to having a united Opposition in the 2024 general elections.
“On the matter of opposition unity, we are working towards it and it is coming along very nicely. But I think in order to defeat the BJP, you need more than just opposition unity. Just opposition unity, in my opinion, is not going to be enough to do the job. I think you need an alternative vision to the BJP," he said.
“Part of Bharat Jodo Yatra was the first step in proposing such a vision. It's the vision that all opposition parties are aligned with. No opposition party would disagree with the idea of the Bharat Jodo Yatra," he said.
Gandhi-led mass movement Bharat Jodo Yatra, which commenced on September 7 from Kanyakumari, covered 12 states before concluding in Jammu and Kashmir on January 31. During the course of the yatra, Gandhi, 52, addressed 12 public meetings, over 100 corner meetings and 13 press conferences. He had over 275 planned walking interactions and more than 100 sitting interactions.
"So, I think bringing the opposition together is important, but also aligning the opposition and making the people of India understand that there is not just a group of opposition parties that have combined but a proposed way forward for the country. And we're working on those things," Gandhi said.
(With inputs from agencies)
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