 "Jairam Ramesh")
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday said that the G-23 is only a figment of imagination and "there is only G-Congress".
Ramesh, who, along with his senior party colleague Digvijaya Singh arrived here to finalise the upcoming Bharat Jodo Yatra, to be led by Rahul Gandhi and set to kick off from Tamil Nadu's Kaniyakumari on September 7, was interacting with the media here.
Preferring to sidestep questions related to the resignation of veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad, he said the yatra will go on and resignations, elections, and such things will all happen.
"Those men and women who have left the Congress after the yatra was announced are engaged in match-fixing with the BJP. Personal ambitions might also be there. Our organisational elections to elect our party President also will be held when the yatra is on," said Ramesh.
"Our party election schedule has now been announced and anyone can contest. Remember we are the only party where our President is elected... which other party has this. This has got nothing to do with the yatra as this yatra is done to expose the economic, social and political ideology of the BJP.
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"Those who predict the demise of the Congress will be surprised to see that this yatra will be the 'sanjeevani' of our party," he added.
On the departure of Azad, Singh said he never left the party on any ideological ground.
"People have been in the Rajya Sabha for 30 years and then leave and it's not based on any ideological ground, but splinter personal issues. The fight is not based on ideology and has he ever spoken against (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi or the RSS? Our fight is against the divisive politics being practised in the country and the economic policies. 99 per cent of the people in the country have lost their incomes, while one percent have doubled theirs," he said.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra, will reach the Kerala border on September 11 and will cover 43 Assembly constituencies and 12 Lok Sabha constituencies in its 453-km, 19 day journey through the state.
--IANS
sg/vd
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
