Modi failed in his poll promises: Rahul Gandhi

Congress president says Congress has learnt from its mistakes

A confident Rahul Gandhi has predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's failure to deliver on key poll promises — creating jobs, providing succour to farmers and eliminating corruption — will lead to the downfall of his government in the Lok Sabha elections next year.

Rahul said the people's disenchantment with the Modi government had already found expression in the Gujarat Assembly elections, where the BJP only won by a whisker, and that Karnataka will send a clear message to the BJP later this month.

"There are a couple of ideas that Mr Narendra Modi came to power on. Number one is jobs, number two is fighting corruption, number three is farmers. And he has failed at all three," Rahul told DH in a freewheel interview at his residence here on Wednesday evening.

"Gujarat is the first demonstration that he has failed in them, Karnataka will be the next and after that you will see Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. And then in 2019, India is clearly going to state to Mr Narendra Modi, 'Mr Modi, you promised us three things basically and you have given us a lot of talk. But nothing has really happened'," he said.

Rahul said the Congress had learnt its lessons from the mistakes it had committed during the 10 years of the UPA rule and was ready to take on the BJP.

"Ten years is a very long time at the national level, so we made our mistakes, we had a very bad economic environment, we had a perfect storm that developed at that time, and we lost the election," said Rahul, who took over as Congress president in December.

"Now we have done a lot of introspection. We are working on developing new leadership, bringing in more and more voices in the Congress. And we are very confident that the Congress is going to expand very dramatically," he said, asserting that the party had the support of 20% of voters nationally.

To a question on the delay in constituting the Congress Working Committee, Rahul said he was making changes in the Congress "not in an immediate manner, but slowly and steadily". "I think it (the party) is working quite effectively," the Congress president said.

He also dismissed the talk of a division between senior and junior leaders in the Congress as "oversimplification".

"There is tremendous value in experience, there is also tremendous value and energy in youth. And my view of the Congress is to bring these two together," Rahul said.

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