The Congress Presidential candidate Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday said he will work with other party leaders if elected to the post of president of the Indian National Congress. He also dismissed that the Gandhi family will “remote control” him and he will be their puppet president.
He arrived in Gujarat to canvass for his candidature and met the AICC delegates who will cast their vote in the presidential polls of the party in which he is pitted against the party’s parliamentarian and former union minister Shashi Tharoor.
"A lot of people say I am a remote control and work from behind. They say I will do what Sonia Gandhi will say. There is no such thing as remote control in Congress, people take decisions together,” he said, adding that the BJP is spreading the canards about the leadership of the Congress party.
In fact, he suggested that the BJP party was being remote controlled by the Prime Minister, who is authoritarian.
“How many times the BJP held an internal election to the elect its president,” he asked, adding nobody knows how the BJP president is appointed.
“When I will be elected as Congress president, the remote control will stay with me and everyone will work as per the party’s organisational structure,” he asserted.
He also recounted the various positions he held in the Congress party as well as in the governments in Karnataka as well as at the centre during the UPA regime. “I have been working for the party for 55 years now and held positions from district to top level,” he added.
Mr. Kharge also praised Nehru Gandhi family for their contribution for the country and said that two members of the party sacrificed their lives referring to the assassination of late PM India Gandhi and former PM Rajiv Gandhi.
In Ahmedabad, he visited Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram to offer his tributes and also held meeting with AICC delegates at the state Congress office.
During his media interaction, he declined to believe that the the party was unable to overcome the challenges it faces after the two consecutive electoral debacles at the centre in 2014 and 2019.
