With the 2019 general elections in mind former Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi on Thursday said "winds of changes are coming" and she would work with "like- minded parties" to ensure the BJP's defeat. Asking the party to be ready for polls, Sonia said 2014 was a severe setback,
"but I am convinced that it was an aberration".
At the same time, she sent out the message that it's her son Rahul Gandhi who now calls the shots as the new Congress President and that there will not be two power centres. "We have elected a new Congress President and on your behalf and on my own, I wish him all the very best. He is now my boss too — let there be no doubt about that — and I know that all of you will work with him with the same dedication, loyalty and enthusiasm as you did with me," she said.
Sonia told the MPs at a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) that the process to revive the party's fortunes had begun after the recent results in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Pushing the Congress into poll gear, the CPP Chairperson also launched an all-out attack on the BJP and the Modi Government and alleged that it was orchestrating violence against minorities to polarise society for narrow political gains. This would be seen in Karnataka too, which goes to the polls in a few months, the former Congress president, who handed over the party's reins to Rahul Gandhi after 19 years in December last year, told the CPP.
Noting that people were disenchanted with the BJP, she said it was for the Congress to channel this discontent into support. "We have demonstrated our resilience before and we are now called upon to do so again. For this we must not only highlight the abject failures of the Modi Government but more importantly, build a positive and credible narrative for ourselves on issues of public concern," she said.
As CPP Chairperson, she said she would work with the Congress President and other colleagues "in discussions with like-minded, political parties to ensure that in the next election, the BJP is defeated and India is restored to a democratic, inclusive, secular, tolerant and economically progressive path".