Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for diverting attention from the real issues in the run up to Lok Sabha Elections 2024, and said he will follow the Congress decision on whether he should contest in Amethi.
Gandhi, who addressed a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Ghaziabad, termed the Prime Minister “champion of corruption.”
“The Prime Minister gave a scripted interview recently. He said Electoral Bonds were brought in to ensure transparency in poll funding. If it was so, why did the SC scrap it? And if it was so why did the BJP hide the name of donors. Electoral bonds is the biggest extortion scheme in the world. The whole country knows the PM is a champion of corruption,” Gandhi said.
In an interview with news agency ANI, the PM had on April 15 defended the now-scrapped Electoral Bonds saying the policy was providing crucial information about the trail of the money, and all the stakeholders involved in the political funding.
Rahul Gandhi also said that he will follow Congress party’s decision on whether or not to contest from Amethi. “These decisions are taken by CEC. I will follow what CEC says,” Gandhi, the Congress candidate and incumbent lawmaker from Wayanad said.
In 2019, Rahul won from Wayanad in Kerala but lost from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress is contesting the Ghaziabad seat, apart from other seats in UP, in alliance with SP as part of opposition’s INDIA bloc. Polling will be held in Ghaziabad in the second phase on April 26.
The two leaders have not campaigned together in Western Uttar Pradesh, where polling is scheduled on April 19 for ten seats.
The coming together of the two prominent opposition leaders is expected to impact elections across Uttar Pradesh, especially Western Uttar Pradesh.
The INDIA bloc has fielded Dolly Sharma of the Congress as its candidate from Ghaziabad. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate is local MLA Atul Garg. The Ghaziabad seat is currently represented by Union Minister General VK Singh (retd) who won the seat twice in 2014 and 2019. The seat was wrested by Union Minister Rajnath Singh in 2009 after the Congress won the seat in 2004.
The Congress is contesting 17 seats. The SP and other parties of the alliance will field its candidates in 63 of the 80 parliamentary seats, as per the seat-sharing deal of the India bloc. The BJP won 62 of the 80 seats from Uttar Pradesh in 2019 and 71 in the 2014 general elections.
The Congress and the SP had contested the 2017 assembly elections in UP, which the BJP won, as alliance partners.
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