New Delhi,
\nThe inaugural day of the 84th Congress Plenary today witnessed a combative Sonia Gandhi attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a \u201ctrickster\u201d and urged cadres to be ready for any sacrifice in the face of \u201cextraordinary\u201d challenges ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s evident that his (Modi\u2019s) 2014 promises of \u201csabka saath sabka vikas\u201d and \u201cnaa khaunga naa khaane dunga\u201d were \u201cdramebaazi\u201d and tricks to wrest power,\u201d Sonia said in a speech that fired attending party delegates like she was still Congress president. Her address followed the adoption of Congress\u2019 political resolution which, for the first time, endorsed pre-poll tie-ups based on common workable programmes to \u201cdefeat the BJP and RSS in 2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gandhi used chaste Hindi, the language of the heartland, to tear into the BJP for \u201cusing every trick to undermine the Congress, including slapping false cases on its leaders, denigrating Parliament and controlling the media\u201d. Her message to the Plenary was clear: \u201cCongress has never succumbed to pressures and never will\u2026 We face tough challenges which are not ordinary. But we must face these formidably and be ready for any sacrifice to build a discrimination-free, revenge-free and arrogance-free India.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old veteran Congress woman spoke five hours after Congress president Rahul Gandhi, her son, and even today attracted more applause than all the speakers put together. A mix of emotion and firmness strengthened her speech as Gandhi remembered her early days from 1998 to 2004 as a period when Congress emerged from political ashes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe formed governments in many states and bounced back from a position of weakness at that time,\u201d Sonia said invoking her mother-in-law and former PM Indira Gandhi\u2019s historic Chikmaglur win to give hope to the party in election-bound Karnataka. \u201cI am hopeful the Congress will repeat a spectacular performance in Karnataka and that will give new direction to national politics,\u201d she said, citing Congress\u2019 Gujarat and Rajasthan performances to challenge BJP\u2019s Congress-free India slogan.<\/p>\n
Speaking from a newage hi-tech stage that mirrored the generational shift in the party that would earlier have veterans lounge on dais for Plenary discussions, Sonia feted UPA-1 and 2 for a rights-based approach and slammed the BJP for undermining it.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Sonia urged everyone to work with Rahul who kept his inaugural address short sufficing to mention in times of the rise of regional parties that Congress alone can guide a \u201cfatigued India\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nation is fatigued. When youth look towards PM Modi, they see no jobs. Farmers do not know when they will get a fair price for their produce. Everyone is looking for direction. The Congress alone can guide the country. We will work for everyone,\u201d Rahul said in a five-minute speech this morning after he arrived at the Plenary venue to be received by party veterans, including ex-PM Manmohan Singh, and to unfurl the Tricolour in move customary for party chief.<\/p>\n
This was Rahul\u2019s first session as chief and his effect was visible in the choice of stage d\u00e9cor, patriotic music and lineup of speakers. Lesser know state leaders were called on stage to speak on political and agriculture resolutions and many ended up admitting: \u201cThis is the first time we got a chance to speak before Sonia Gandhi.\u201d Beginnings of a new Congress? Perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, The inaugural day of the 84th Congress Plenary today witnessed a combative Sonia Gandhi attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a \u201ctrickster\u201d and urged cadres to be ready for any sacrifice in the face of \u201cextraordinary\u201d challenges ahead. \u201cIt\u2019s evident that his (Modi\u2019s) 2014 promises of \u201csabka saath sabka vikas\u201d and \u201cnaa khaunga […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25160","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\/25160","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=25160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25162,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160\/revisions\/25162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}