Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi: AICC General Secretary and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijaya Singh, today said if Congress has to win the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and return to power at the Centre, it will have to counter the BJP-RSS combine’s “ill-campaign” — “Congress mukt Bharat” — on social media.
He was addressing a gathering at an interactive session on “Lok Sabha Elections-2019: Challenges and opportunities for Congress” here.
Mr Singh said, “I don’t say that all people are Congress followers but they are definitely Congress supporters.
They believe in the Congress ideology and therefore backed Congress throughout.
Congress was the principal party which fought for the country’s Independence and got a ‘raw’ nation which required “fittings” and nurturing from the scratch.
“Fake news spread by the BJP is the biggest challenge in 2019 elections,” he said, adding it was the biggest strength of the Narendra Modi government.
“How do we fight it (fake news), we have to think about it. They have been able to influence people by spreading lies about everything on social media,” he said.
He also emphasized the need for all secular democratic forces to come together to defeat the ideology of the RSS.
Attacking Modi, Singh said: “We don’t need a big (56-inch) chest, but a Prime Minister with a big heart.”
He also stressed in order to counter the ideology of the RSS, one needs to understand it.
“They talk about Congress-mukt Bharat, but as long as the Congress party is alive, it is the only ideology that can fight the ideology of the RSS,” he said, adding that instead of Congress-mukt Bharat, a “Bhay-mukt Bharat” (fear-free India) has to be established.
To a question by a party worker that why the Congress has always ignored Lord Rama while the BJP has been able to cash the deity well, he replied: “Lord Ram is being worshipped by us, but for BJP, Lord Ram is being used a political strategy, for political reasons.”
