Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “cynically exploiting the national security to hide his colossal failures,” the Congress at its working committee meeting here resolved to defeat the “RSS and BJP’s ideology of fascism, hatred, anger and divisiveness.”

The meeting of the Congress’ highest decision-making body held in Modi’s home state Gujarat was attended by top party leaders including party chief Rahul Gandhi, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and newly appointed General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi among others.

“The Congress Working Committee in Ahmedabad, resolved to defeat the RSS, BJP ideology of fascism, hatred, anger and divisiveness. No sacrifice is too great in this endeavour, no effort too little, this battle will be won,” said Gandhi.

In its resolution, the CWC said Modi and the BJP were insulting the struggle, sacrifices and enormous contribution in nation-building by leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel by “brazenly seeking to hijack their legacy and pretending to be the champions of their values.”

“Congress expresses its strong disappointment that the Prime Minister is cynically exploiting the issue of national security, on which we are all united, to divert attention from his colossal failures, bogus claims and persistent falsehoods,” it said.

The Congress said the five years of Modi-BJP government has been a period of false promises and betrayal of people’s trust and confidence.

“This government has been a failure on all fronts and has inflicted pain and misery on the people through its reckless decisions of demonetisation and hasty imposition of a flawed GST,” it said.

It said demonetisation and GST disrupted the economy, trade and industry, led to closure of lakhs of factories and tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and livelihood.

“The unprecedented joblessness, agrarian crisis and distress of farmers and agricultural laborers are issues of grave national concern. The Modi government is guilty of monumental mismanagement of the Indian economy. National savings and investments have sharply declined.

“Banks are burdened with NPAs and credit off-take of the industry has reached a record low. Exports are stagnant and industrial production has been falling continuously notwithstanding government’s boastful and misleading claims, it said.

The CWC also endorsed the promise made by the Congress President to ensure minimum income support to the poor, weak and marginalised sections of society when the Congress party comes to power.

Briefing the media about the CWC meeting, Congress leader Anand Sharma said an atmosphere of fear and insecurity was all pervasive particularly among women, students, academics, writers and the business community.

“There are deliberate attacks on the Constitutional and other safeguards for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, OBCs and minorities; and there is subversion of all institutions of governance,” he said Sharma also blamed Modi and the BJP for political discourse becoming bitter.

“They talk of dividing the society merely for political gains. Modi is playing with emotions of people. We condemn it,” he added.

Priyanka urged people to consider the Lok Sabha polls as “another independence struggle” and told them to raise the real issues facing them instead of getting drawn into trivialities.

“Your greatest weapon is awareness about the realities facing the country, your vote is your weapon. Use it with after due consideration and due discretion. Ensure that it does not hurt anyone,” Priyanka said in her public address here.

“True ‘desh bhakti’ is getting aware about real problems and challenges before the country.”

Amid slogans comparing her with Indira Gandhi, she made a short speech in a conversational style in Hindi, saying this was her first visit to Gujarat.

“When I went to the Gandhi Ashram in Sabarmati, I was almost driven to tears,” she said, adding that it was “crucial that the message about real issues should go out from this land of the Mahatma.

“In this election, raise issues that are real, not trivial and diversionary, and this is your responsibility as the true citizens. This country belongs to nobody else but to you. So make the right and informed decisions after taking stock of the hollow promises given to you.

Indo-Asian News Service