Washington: Congress leader and Lok Sabha's Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who is currently on a three-day trip to the United States, upped the ante on Tuesday against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and he Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS) by claiming that they had education system, media and investigative agencies had locked Congress' bank accounts ahead of an 'unfair' Lok Sabha elections. He also asserted that he did not hate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that they simply had a difference of persepectives.
Speaking at an interaction with students at the prestigious Georgetown University, Rahul Gandhi said, "Before the election, we were emphasising that institutions were being captured: the education system was captured by the RSS, the media was captured, and the investigative agencies were captured. However, people were not understanding it, and we couldn't figure out why. In a meeting, someone who works with us said, "Try holding up the Constitution." I started holding up the Constitution, and suddenly, everything we had been saying just exploded.
"India realised in this election not to divide it so crudely, but poor, disenfranchised, and oppressed India understood that if the Constitution is compromised, the entire system collapses. That was the shocking realisation I witnessed. Poor people deeply understood that now this is a battle between those who protect the Constitution and those who seek to destroy it," he added.
BJP could not have won 240 seats in 'fair election'
The Congress leader stressed that the recent Lok Sabha elections were far from 'free and fair', otherwise the BJP could not have won 240 seats. "I don't believe that in a fair election, the BJP would come anywhere near 240 seats. I would be surprised. They had a huge financial advantage and had locked our bank accounts. The Election Commission was doing what they wanted. The entire campaign was structured so that Mr Modi could carry out his agenda across the country, with different designs for different states. I don’t see it as a free election," he added.
"I was watching the elections, and there was a point when we sat down with the treasurer, who said, ‘Look, your bank accounts are frozen. How are you supposed to fight an election if your bank accounts are frozen?’ We really didn’t have an answer then. Yet the Congress Party fought the election and essentially destroyed the idea of Modi," Rahul Gandhi further said.
He exuded confidence that the Congress will emerge triumphant in the upcoming elections over the BJP. "In the next two or three months we will win these elections...Undoing the damage that BJP and RSS have done to our institutions is a much deeper problem and that is not going to get solved so easily and so simply...There is a huge set of structures that are being used to attack the opposition - investigative agencies, the legal system that continues which has to stop. The real challenge is to make institutions neutral again," he said.
Don't hate Narendra Modi: Rahul Gandhi
He further said PM Narendra Modi was "psychologically trapped" and could not figure out the results of the Lok Sabha elections, where the BJP fell short of a majority by winning 240 seats, while the Congress won 99 seats. He repeated his oft-repeated claims that PM Modi had a 'nexus' with two or three large businesses.
"Halfway through the campaign, Modi didn't think that he was near 300-400 seats...We knew when he said that I speak directly to God. We knew that there we had blown him apart...We saw it as a psychological collapse...The coalition that brought Narendra Modi to power has collapsed," Rahul Gandhi said in Georgetown University.
However, Rahul Gandhi said he did not "hate" PM Modi. "When Indian people go to their religious places, they merge with their deity. This is the nature of India. The misunderstanding that BJP and RSS have is they think that India is a whole bunch of separate things... He has a point of view; I don't agree with the point of view, but I don't hate him. He has a different perspective, and I have a different perspective...In many moments I empathise with him," he said.
'Will scrap reservation if...'
Rahul Gandhi also said the Congress will think of scrapping reservations when India is a fair place, which is not the case right now. “When you look at the financial numbers, then tribals get 10 paise out of 100 rupees; Dalits get 5 rupees out of 100 rupees, and OBCs get a similar number. The fact of the matter is that they're not getting participation," he said.
"The problem is that 90 per cent of India is not able to play. Go through the list of every single business leader in India. I've done it. Show me the tribal name. Show me the Dalit name. Show me the OBC name. Out of the top 200, I think there's one OBC. They're 50 per cent of India. But we're not treating the symptom,” he said on his stance on caste census.
(with inputs from agencies)
ALSO READ | Rahul Gandhi in Virginia: 'RSS doesn't understand India... it says certain states inferior to others'
