London: The BJP likes to believe that it will be in power in India eternally but that is not the case and the Opposition can come together to undertake the “repair work” that needs to be done for Indian democracy, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said.
Addressing an in-conversation session at the Chatham House think tank in London on Monday evening to round off his week-long UK tour, the member of Parliament from Kerala’s Wayanad once again claimed that Israeli software Pegasus was planted on his phone as he accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to silence dissent in India.
“To put it in perspective, if you look at the time from independence to now, the Congress party has been in power for the majority of the time,” Gandhi said.
“Before the BJP was in power for 10 years, we were in power for 10 years. The BJP likes to believe that they have come to power in India and they are going to be in power eternally, that’s not the case,” the 52-year-old former Congress chief said.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power in India in 2014.
Gandhi pointed to a set of changes taking place in India that had caught the Congress and the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the party off guard, such as a shift from rural to urban.
“We were focusing a lot on the rural space, and we missed the ball at the beginning on the urban space, that is a fact. Those things are there. But to say that the BJP is in power and the Congress gone, that is actually a ridiculous idea,” he said.
PTI