Happy that 2014 happened, helped Congress come up with new vision: Rahul Gandhi

Congress president Rahul Gandhi has said that the Grand Old Party lost miserably in 2014 as it was trying to a run a model that wasn’t working but asserted that he was happy as the previous results taught them a lot. In an interview to The Indian Express published on Sunday, the Congress chief said, "I think what impacted the UPA was that we were trying to run a model that wasn’t working. Mr Manmohan Singh came with the model in the 1990s, it was very successful, we ran that model, we tweaked it and we ran in from 2004-09, and frankly we then tried to run the same ideas from 2009-14 and they didn’t work and the people of India punished us for it. Now we’re coming with a completely new set of ideas, with a new vision for this country."

Slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his “unilateral decision-making style”, Rahul Gandhi said that Modi was solely responsible for the mess created by his government as he didn’t consult his Cabinet members before taking any major decision that had an adverse effect on the country’s economy.

"When he demonetised the economy, nobody in his Cabinet was consulted. When he did the Gabbar Singh Tax, nobody in his Cabinet was consulted. There are many, many more instances of his unilateral decision-making style that has left our economy in a shambles and unemployment at a 45-year high," the Gandhi scion said.

Gandhi said that PM Modi talked only about a country free from the Congress and no other parties as he feared that the Congress is the only party that will defeat him in the elections.

"It is the Congress party that is going to defeat Mr Modi in this election. Mr Modi doesn’t say Mukt-Bharat about others. He says Congress-Mukt Bharat and there’s a reason. Because we are fighting him ideologically and we are the only real threat to him and the RSS," he said.

Speaking about the BJP fighting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on the issue of nationalism, the Congress president said that Modi distract people from real issues whenever he is in any trouble.

"We have a tremendous record on nationalism and the main issues in this election are joblessness, the destruction of India’s pride, which was her economy, the state of our farmers and the blatant corruption of Mr Modi. Now Mr Modi has a trick — he likes to distract the country whenever he is in trouble," he added.