Six-member panel, headed by Jaipal Reddy to oversee the campaign; senior leaders to travel to different states and districts to raise the ‘defence scam’.
New Delhi: The Congress will raise the Rafale issue in every state to “expose” the BJP in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party decided at a meeting chaired by Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Delhi Saturday.
The Congress move seems to have been inspired by the BJP’s nation-wide campaign to mark the 43rd anniversary of the Emergency, imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. As part of this, BJP leaders travelled to different parts of the country and did press conferences, small meetings and rallies highlighting “excesses” committed during that period.
Taking a cue from the BJP, now the Congress has asked all its state presidents and general secretaries to highlight the Rafale deal, which party leaders said, can put the BJP on back foot in the upcoming elections, provided the party can raise it adequately.
The Congress has also constituted a six-member task-force, headed by Jaipal Reddy, on this matter.
Also read: Everything you wanted to know about Rafale and did not know who to ask
“This is one of the biggest defence scams of the country where Prime Minister Modi has directly helped one of his industrialist friends,” said Congress communication in-charge Randeep Surjewala after the meeting.
“We have decided to raise this issue at state and district level to make the people of this country aware about the loot under the current government,” he added.
AICC general secretary and organisation in-charge Ashok Gehlot will soon be releasing the schedule of the programme for each state. According to party sources, it will be a month-long exercise.
In the next one month, senior leaders of the party would be traveling to different states and districts as assigned to them where they would talk about alleged corruption in the Rafale deal.
For the past few days, Congress has stepped up attack on the ruling BJP on the Rafale issue. The fight has now reached social media where both the parties had used non-political persons to explain the Rafale deal. While BJP has projected Pallavi Joshi, a TV personality, to explain the deal, the Congress has posted a video giving a counter to Joshi’s explanation.
Also read: Modi government’s refusal to appoint Lokpal weakens its Rafale defence
The flood situation in Kerala was also discussed in Saturday’s meeting. Congress leaders demanded that the Kerala floods be declared a national calamity. “Modiji should stop discrimination between BJP and non-BJP governments. Only Rs 100 crore has been given to Kerala which has faced massive devastations,” said Surjewala.
The Congress has also asked its own state governments to offer monetary help to Kerala. In response, Punjab and Karnataka have offered Rs 10 crore each while the Puducherry government has given Rs 1 crore to Kerala.