Dimapur: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced Tuesday that the Congress is in talks with other Opposition parties and will lead the Opposition alliance “that will come to power at the Centre in 2024”.
The statement comes days after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who leads an alliance government of which the Congress is a part, asked it to take a lead in affecting opposition unity. Kumar later lined up a mahagathbandhan meeting in Bihar on 25 February, at the same time that the Congress is holding its plenary meeting in Raipur.
“This country will not be ruled by an autocrat that dictates people. In 2024 (Parliamentary elections), the Congress will lead the alliance government at the Centre. We are talking with others and the Congress will take the lead on how to win 2024. Therefore the BJP will lose their majority and we will get majority and we will follow the Constitution. Let 100 Modis come,” said Congress president Kharge, while addressing a thinning crowd at the Diphuhar Village Public Ground in Nagaland.
The public meeting held in support of Congress candidates contesting this month’s Nagaland assembly elections.
Congress has fielded 23 candidates for the 60-member Assembly. Elections are being held for 59 as one person has already been elected unopposed. Voting is scheduled to be held on 27 February. The Congress currently has no seat in the Nagaland assembly and was reduced to a vote share of just two per cent (in the 2018 assembly elections).
The mood at the meeting was subdued even before Kharge’s arrival and slogans of “Congress ase upai ase (if there is Congress there’s a way)” were met with a muted response.
Later, as Kharge challenged BJP leaders to walk “just 100 km in Nagaland”, as compared to the “3,700 km” that Rahul Gandhi has covered during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, concluded last month, and then launched into the reasons why the Congress wants a joint parliamentary committee set up in the matter of the Hindenburg allegations against the Adani group, the chairs rapidly started emptying. The American short-seller Hindenburg Research has in a report alleged corporate malpractice, stock price manipulation and fraud by businessman Gautam Adani’s company.
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Invoking Naga pride
The Congress meeting in Diphuhar village opened with a Christian prayer — close to 90 per cent of the state’s population comprise Christians according to data from the 2011 Census.
“There is no need for a state which has a 95 per cent Christian population, to vote for a party that is persecuting Christians. The party that is persecuting Christians across the country. If there is true democracy in Nagaland, then there is no reason for any one of the 23 Congress candidates in the state to be defeated,” state Congress president K. Therie said in his address.
Other speakers too referred to the issue of alleged persecution of Christians, with former Chief Minister K. L. Chishi urging Kharge to take up the concerns of the church council with the Prime Minister.
Kharge in his speech referred to how despite Prime Minister Modi’s claims that the solution lay in the Framework Agreement (of the Naga Peace Accord of 2015), the Naga political issue remains unresolved. Talks between the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isaak Muivah (NSCN-IM) and the Government of India have entered the 26th year, but the peace process remains stuck over the outfit’s demand for a separate Naga national flag and Constitution in recognition of the “Naga history spanning over 70 years”.
The Congress president also allayed fears expressed by party leaders that Article 371 of the Constitution, which accords special status to several states, including Nagaland, would be revoked. “They (the Union government) would have to do that to eight states (sic),” Kharge said, promising that the Congress party would not let that happen.
Many in the audience were from families of traditional Congress supporters, but few seemed in any doubt about the outcome of the elections.
“My family had always been with the Congress, but this time it would be the BJP-NDPP (the regional, Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party) government in the state. Kharge was good but won’t Rahul Gandhi come?” asked Munim Choudhury who works as a driver.
Kharge made several promises to the state, including a Rs 3,000 old-age pension scheme and zero-interest education loans. Perhaps addressing the concerns in the minds of many of his listeners, about how the party that is contesting 23 seats will form government in a state with a 60-member assembly, he ended the speech saying “when we form the (state) government in an alliance”.
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