Our resilience being tested, agitation needed: Sonia tells Cong leaders

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 12

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday exhorted party leaders to work out an agitation plan saying the ruling BJP is testing the Congress’s patience and resilience.

The Congress is planning to counter the RSS propaganda of “pracharaks” through coordinators who will spread party ideology across India.

Addressing leaders, including CMs of Punjab, Rajasthan and Puducherry—Capt Amarinder Singh, Ashok Gehlot and V Narayanasamy—at a meeting to plan celebrations on the culmination of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, Sonia said, “The economic situation is very grim. Losses are mounting. General confidence is shaking and all that the government is doing is indulging in unprecedented vendetta politics to divert attention from the mounting losses.”

She said the democracy is in peril today. “Mandate is being misused and abused in the most dangerous fashion. Appropriation of freedom fighters and leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and BR Ambedkar is being done with the sole and tragic aim of misinterpreting their true messages to further their nefarious agenda. The Congress Party must have agitational agenda. Our resolve and resilience is being tested now,” she said.

Former PM Manmohan Singh said the country is in the midst of a “dangerously protracted showdown”. “The economy is going from bad to worse and the government is not realising this. The worst would happen in the employment sector,” he said.