Sonia Gandhi: Congress to work with like-minded parties to defeat BJP in 2019

UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Thursday talked of an alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls said she will work with like-minded political parties to defeat the BJP in the election

Sonia Gandhi

UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Thursday talked of an alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls said she will work with like-minded political parties to defeat the BJP in the election.

Addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting here, Gandhi also urged party members to strongly prepare for the next parliamentary elections.

Gandhi said she will work with Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other party leaders in touch with "like-minded parties" to forge a strategy to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"As for myself, as Chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party, I will work with the Congress President and other colleagues in discussions with like-minded political parties to ensure that in the next election, the BJP is defeated and India is restored to a democratic, inclusive, secular, tolerant and economically progressive path," she said.

Terming the 2014 electoral debacle of the party as an "aberration", she called upon party workers to channelize the "discontent" among people against the Modi government.

"We have to be in a state of readiness for the national elections which are due in slightly over a year - and might well be called earlier as they were in 2004. No doubt 2014 was a severe setback, but I am convinced that it was an aberration.

"Increasingly, the people of our country, people belonging to all sections of our society, are getting disillusioned with the present regime. It is for us to channel this discontent into support (for the opposition)," she said.

Gandhi also called for building a positive and credible narrative against the Modi government.

"We have demonstrated our resilience before and we are now called upon to do so again. For this we must not only highlight the abject failures of the Modi government but more importantly, build a positive and credible narrative for ourselves on issues of public concern," she said.

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