New Delhi,
\nGoing public for the first time in many years, a candid and combative Sonia Gandhi today said her party would not let the incumbent BJP return to power in 2019 General Election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not let the BJP return to power,\u201d said Sonia, former Congress president, who described herself as a \u201cCongresswoman\u201d today and urged \u201clike-minded parties to bury their differences in national interest\u201d and come together to defeat the BJP.<\/p>\n
On March 13, Sonia, as the UPA chairperson, will host leaders of non-NDA outfits for dinner at her residence here. The bid is to unite them. Speaking at a conclave in Mumbai today, Sonia reflected on a range of issues, including reasons for Congress’ electoral rout in 2014; her son and Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s functioning style and the future role of her daughter Priyanka Vadra.<\/p>\n
\u201cCongress was out-marketed in 2014. I still believe the UPA did a lot of work but we were unable to convey it to the people\u2026the Congress needs to find new ways of connecting with masses, organisationally,” Sonia said not ruling out her daughter’s entry to politics. \u201cHer (read Priyanka Vadra’s) children have their exams currently but who knows about tomorrow?\u201d she said on Priyanka’s future.<\/p>\n
In an important confession, Sonia also admitted to tensions between the old guard in the Congress and her son.<\/p>\n
\u201cRahul always wanted to induct youth into the party and would say how will we grow unless we have youngsters in lead roles. But the old guard was worried what they would do. I am glad in the last working committee meeting, Rahul clarified that he would take the old and the young along,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She was vitriolic in her attack of the BJP which she accused of imposing a “regressive vision” on India.<\/p>\n
“We are being presented with an alternative and regressive vision of who we were as a people…For years, our public discourse has been anchored in decency..and not in invective, innuendo and abuse. But our country, our freedoms \u2014 all are now under systematic and sustained assault. This is a well-thought out project, long in the making, to refashion the very idea of India. It involves rewriting history, falsifying facts, slandering nation-builders and fanning prejudice and bigotry,” Sonia said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, Going public for the first time in many years, a candid and combative Sonia Gandhi today said her party would not let the incumbent BJP return to power in 2019 General Election. \u201cWe will not let the BJP return to power,\u201d said Sonia, former Congress president, who described herself as a \u201cCongresswoman\u201d today […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24405,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24403\/revisions\/24405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}