Congress' Kharge avers victory & defeat part of politics, asserts party is democratic

Congress's leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday exuded full confidence in the founding principles of the grand old party and stated it doesn't get impacted by the victory and defeat of the electoral politics. He reiterated that the party will stick to its core ideology. The MP was responding to the queries on the party's debacle in the recent assembly elections and whether the Modi-Shah duo has posed an existential challenge to the party. 

Congress will not give up on its core idealogy

"Political parties keep getting weaker and stronger in a democracy. Congress is not affected by victory or defeat. It doesn't engage in vote bank politics, and also doesn't abandon the core ideology of the party," said Kharge. He also criticised the BJP for playing the politics of polarisation, citing the demolition of the Babri Masjid. "The BJP was once a party with only two MPs. The BJP is now a dictatorial party," he added, ANI reported.

Kharge also spoke about the democratic principles on the basis of which Jawaharlal Nehru formed government, saying, "For the establishment of democracy, former Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru formed the government in the country by taking opposition leaders as well as non-ideological people along. That's why the party wants to take everyone along to keep democracy alive. But what the present BJP government and the Sangh are doing is not in the interest of the country."

Meanwhile, hectic meetings have been transpiring in the Congress party to discuss ways for a major overhaul. The G-23 dissident leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has been meeting other leaders from the group amid reports suggesting that Congress is likely to accommodate some of the G23 leaders in the party's decision-making process after the assembly poll debacle the party suffered in five states.

This dissident group came to the fore on August 23, 2020, when 23 senior party leaders wrote to Congress president Sonia Gandhi stressing the need for full-time leadership and conducting elections at all levels including the Congress Working Committee. The signatories to the letter included Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Milind Deora and Sandeep Dikshit. 

Image: PTI