Opposition needs to stand up to divisive', communal' vision, says Sonia Gandhi
New Delhi: Pitching the presidential and vice-presidential polls as a battle of ideologies rather than arithmetic, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Sunday said that the Opposition needed to stand up to a vision which wanted to make the country “divisive” and “communal”.
Ms Gandhi was speaking at a high tea where Opposition presidential and vice-presidential candidates Meira Kumar and Gopal Krishna Gandhi met with MPs from 18 political parties backing them. Both Ms Kumar and Mr Gandhi also expressed similar views.
The Congress President said that the numbers might be stacked against the candidates but the battle needed to be fought and fought hard. “We cannot and must not let India be hostage to those who wish to impose upon it a narrow-minded, divisive and communal vision,” she said.
“We must stand more aware than ever of who we are, what we fought for in our independence struggle and what future we want for ourselves. We must have confidence in the values we believe in. This election represents a clash of ideas, a conflict of disparate values. The election demands a vote of conscience to preserve the India that the Mahatma and that illustrious generation of freedom fighters, joined by thousands upon thousands of ordinary men and women, fought for,” she said.
While the presidential polls are to be held on Monday, vice-presidential polls would be held on August 5.
Ms Meira Kumar is understood to have told the MPs that the fight was ideological and that she had been traveling across the country for campaigning.
Vice-presidential candidate Mr Gandhi said, “In arithmetic, we might be losing, but we have won in another way. This has brought together Opposition parties from Kanyakumari to Kashmir in a string. That is an achievement. There is an atmosphere of fear everywhere now. There is fear about who all are hearing you.”
A total of 18 Opposition parties had come together to field a joint presidential candidate which was seen by many as exploration for a joint platform ahead of the 2019 general elections.
However, the JD(U), led by Nitish Kumar, broke ranks and backed the NDA presidential nominee, Ram Nath Kovind. However, the JD(U) backed the Opposition vice-presidential candidate Mr Gandhi.
