Rahul Gandhi’s Clarification on Dissent in Congress

Differing points of view can only survive in Congress, party leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday during his first public remarks about the G23 leaders who have sought sweeping changes within the grand old party.

During an interaction with the faculty members and students of the Brown University, Rahul Gandhi said, “In our party, 20 people have different views. Do you think they can exist in the BJP, BSP, or Trinamool Congress?” Negotiation can’t stop inside the party even as a section has different viewpoints, he added.

The G-23 leaders included senior party leaders- Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, and Manish Tewari who in August last year wrote a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, seeking sweeping changes in the party’s functioning and visible leadership. This further deepened the crisis in the organisation.

A Hindustan Times report stated that on Tuesday, Gandhi, who is widely expected to return as the party’s president, said the Congress will remain “chaotic and constant” and never be a cadre-based organisation such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). “The Congress is not the Nazi party. It’s not RSS. Our problem is that negotiations between different sections have fractured. We are chaotic, we are constant. We are the conversation. That’s our system…,” he said.

He further accused the BJP and RSS of destroying the country’s framework that would have otherwise protected people. And he cautioned that if India can’t create jobs, it would face a “catastrophic” problem.

The BJP has, in the past rejected Gandhi’s allegations that the party and its ideological parent, RSS, have “destroyed the country’s institutional framework”.