Srinagar: Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Shri Rahul Gandhi arrived in Srinagar on August 22, 2024, on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir to take stock of the Party’s preparations for the upcoming assembly polls in the Union Territory and explore a likely alliance with the National Conference. The Congress leaders received a rousing welcome upon their arrival here with Party activists and supporters lining up outside the airport. The enthusiastic supporters even stopped Shri Gandhi’s vehicle on the airport road, causing some anxious moments for the security personnel escorting him.

The two leaders are visiting the UT for key meetings in connection with the three-phased assembly elections beginning September 18. The two leaders engaged in extensive discussions with Party leaders and workers of 10 districts of the Kashmir valley and from Jammu region also on August 22, 2024.

While addressing the Congress workers meeting in Kashmir, Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge said that my relation with Jammu and Kashmir is not just a matter of my choice, I have a blood relation with Jammu and Kashmir. Therefore, our expectation is that Jammu and Kashmir will definitely support us in the upcoming elections. You will have to put in all your efforts and the elections are being held here in three phases. It is always the BJP that decides from which place to start the elections, how to bring its people to the elections and all their anger is on the Congress, not on other parties because other parties do not fight and there is only one brave person who fights, and that is Rahul Gandhi.

So don’t support those who get scared. Those who fear, die. And we will be with you, our Party is with you and will always be with you. We don’t need you just for votes, we need your vote to save this country and you should vote for the Congress Party to save the culture of this place, to save the rights of the people here and to save the self-respect of the people here. This is what this election needs.

The Congress President said, on January 30, 2023, on the 75th martyrdom day of Gandhiji, an event was organized in Srinagar, you all remember this. All the tall leaders of the opposition were present here and the meeting was held in the rain. I had bought this cap at that time. This cap helped me win, so I came wearing this cap even in the summer. It is summer now, but at that time there was snow everywhere and we won under the leadership of Rahul ji and you can also see our photo in the snow. ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ ended with snow in Srinagar. Then Shri Rahul Gandhi made his journey from Manipur to Mumbai in Maharashtra. He himself went to Manipur, campaigned, met people, did padayatra. After that, his programme ended in Mumbai.

Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge emphasized that this election is very important and I hope that we will win at least 40-45 seats. We have received a survey that shows that we will win and that survey says that if there is the highest trend to be seen towards any Party, it is towards Congress and we have also received the trend that the most popular leader in Jammu and Kashmir is Rahul Gandhi. You people told us this.

He told the crowd present there that even if we suffer losses somewhere, we still stand with the public, we stand with the people, we are not going to run away. So, I will request all the people once again that during Modi’s 10 years of rule, 2350 terrorist incidents took place. 377 civilians lost their lives. I do not have words to describe the sacrifice that the people of Jammu and Kashmir are making. I will tell you a fact, Governor Satyapal Malik said, you heard how an RSS-BJP leader who was in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir at that time offered a bribe of crores of rupees to clear some files of a close friend of Modi sahab.

He said, Governor sahab himself disclosed this, but CBI investigation was never done. Your governor says and you do not investigate it and if any party works to save democracy, then you put its people in ED, CBI, do income tax raids. The thief is sitting next to you and you are searching for the thief outside. It is always like this- ‘Muh mein ram, bagal mein chhuri’ (Butter would not melt in one’s mouth).

He said that I am concluding my speech by reminding you of a few things that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had said because I will tell the remaining things in Jammu also, but I told what was necessary to tell here. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru used to say that from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, India has so many forms and so many pictures, multitude of languages, many lifestyles, all this together forms ‘India’. The feeling of communality is the call of history which will give us the most strength. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said this at that time. Brother, ‘Unity in Diversity’ lies in that fact. But here, Modi ji breaks parties by breaking everything. He breaks people, breaks religions, works to break everyone. But this never happened under the rule of Congress and we will never let this happen - this is our promise and we fight on one ideology.

He boosted the morale of the congress workers by saying - our workers are fighting your part of the battle, so from this platform I would like to tell our leaders to unite and fight strongly. The Party is with you, Rahul ji is with you, we all are with you.

On this occasion, former Congress President and Leader of the Opposition Shri Rahul Gandhi addressed the congress workers in Kashmir. He said that we call you workers, but you are our family, you are not just workers. Elections are being held in different states. As soon as we came to know that elections are going to be held, Kharge ji and I met and we both decided that we should first go to Jammu and Kashmir, because we want to give a message to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the people of every state of India that in the history of India, after independence, Union Territories have been converted into states many times, but there is only one example, when statehood was taken away from a state and it was converted into a Union Territory! This has happened for the first time, this had never happened before and we want to give this message that representation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir is important, it is important for us and for the country. That is why we all have come here first.

Shri Rahul Gandhi said, I will tell you my point of view. I want to protect democracy in the entire country. I protect the representation of the country, but my aim is to eliminate the pain, sorrow and fear in the hearts of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. This is not a political matter for me, this is a deep thought. What you have to bear, the fear with which you live, the sorrow you suffer, I, Kharge ji, the entire Congress Party want to eradicate it forever.

He said, I will say two-three more things. If anyone has worked in Jammu and Kashmir with confidence and fearlessness, then it is a Congress worker. I know what you people have to endure, but you fight every day for the flag of the Congress Party, the ideology of the Congress Party and are ready to sacrifice your life. There will be an alliance, but it will be done by maintaining the respect of the workers of the Congress Party. It is a simple thing, it will be done with love, it will be done with friendship, but it will be done with respect for our workers, it will be done with respect for our leaders because you have given your whole life in protecting the ideology of the Congress Party, in taking the thinking of the Congress Party forward and I know how much pain you have endured. On present situation of the country, he said - you know the condition of the country. There is unemployment in the whole country, there is unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir. The opportunities that should be available to the youth of this state, the youth of other states are not being given to them. But one thing has changed and you must have seen this on TV that the INDIA Alliance has destroyed the confidence of Narendra Modi in the elections. You must have seen that earlier Narendra Modi used to come with his chest puffed out, now he comes like this and who made him lose, the ideology of the Congress Party, the ideology of the INDIA Alliance, love, unity, respect.

Leader of opposition Shri Rahul Gandhi said - We did not do anything with violence, did not use wrong words, but told Narendra Modi clearly that you are not what you think about yourself. We have broken his confidence, his self-confidence, his psychology. I wanted to give you this message. You are a worker of the Congress Party, You are a Babbar Sher and you are not just a worker, this is a whole family. Wherever you need us, whenever you want, whether it is Kharge ji or me, whenever you need us, you just have to give the order, we will be there and I want to tell the people of Jammu and Kashmir, the youth - we have to open a shop of love in the market of hatred. Hatred cannot be countered by hatred. Hatred can only be countered by love and together we will defeat hatred with love.

Jammu: Congress Workers’ Meeting on August 22, 2024, Congress President, Shri Mallikarjun Kharge said - The upcoming election is a very important election because it is an election for your existence. If you win in this, you will get statehood, if you win in this, the council will come back again, if you win in this, then elections will be held for district panchayat, municipality, all of them, otherwise the dictatorship with which Modi is ruling today -we are doing the work with a lot of arrogance, that will not work if you win in this election. Therefore, this is a huge responsibility for you. We are working for you because it is very important to save democracy in this country. We are working for you so that all the bodies of democracy here remain intact. We should not forget this. We are not doing any favor to anyone, rather we and you are working together to save this country, to save democracy, to save the Constitution. So, this becomes a very big responsibility of yours. You have broken the pride of Modi ji.

Today our BJP’s Prime Minister, Modi, himself calls himself a tea seller. I did not say this, you people must have heard it. I am the son of a tea seller, I am so and so, my father was like this, my mother was like this. He himself told all this and sometimes he also says - when I used to play, I used to play hockey as well as cricket and what not he says. Such a man sometimes also talks arrogantly. Now I say - you are a tea seller, I am the son of a worker, a labourer, I can do better work than you and the tea seller forgot that there are poor people in this country. In this country, those people do not get even one meal a day. They never thought about it. But the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi ji thought about this and gave you the ‘Food Security Act’ and today every poor is getting food for free, whose gift is it, whose gift is MGNREGA, whose gift is free education –It is Congress’.

I had come here. From Vaishno Devi to there they call it Pir Panjal, they call it Chinar. We tried our best to run a train here, but elections came and we could not run that train. We had to leave the work of making the tunnel.

But Modi ji says that look, the train running from Vaishno Devi to Pir Panjal is running because of me. And you might have many universities in Jammu, Kashmir. But I have never seen that university, still he says that this university was built in his time, such a man he is!

Now he does not have majority, still the poor guy keeps on calling. He did not have majority, like we got 208 seats, UPA government was formed, today he got 15-20 seats more than that, but he is proud even on this - I have come for the third time. Brother, our Shri Rajiv Gandhi never got proud despite getting 415 seats, he always behaved well with everyone, he always did that. He respected everyone, lived with everyone, these are Shri Rajiv Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who saved the country. Smt. Indira Gandhi lived with the poor. We did this work. Modi ji is such a person who always tells his own things. Once in 2023, Shah came to Jammu and Kashmir and he said - you people will get statehood as soon as possible. Did he give it? How long would it take him? It did not take much time for them to dissolve their statehood, Rahul ji said – he gave the example of many states being formed from Union Territories, and then the states were divided and then again became states.

Leader of Opposition Shri Rahul Gandhi addressed the Congress Workers meeting in Jammu region and said - For the first time after independence, a state has been made a union territory, meaning states in India have been divided. Uttarakhand was formed, Jharkhand was formed, Telangana was formed, union territories were converted into states, but states were never converted into union territories. Meaning in the history of India, representation has only been promoted, more representation has been given. People of Jharkhand were given representation, people of Telangana were given representation, but there is only one example where representation was taken away from people, that is Jammu and Kashmir. This has happened for the first time in history and you have seen its result. The benefits that are being received are not for the people of Jammu, not for the people of Kashmir, but are being received by people from outside.

There is a fight between the ideology of the Congress Party and the ideology of the RSS. I am telling you that you have destroyed the confidence of the Prime Minister of India, that is, the Congress workers gave him so much psychological tension that his psychology collapsed and the whole country is able to see this. The kind of Prime Minister Modi ji was before the elections, he is no longer the same Prime Minister and this is your work, because in difficult times, when your ideology was being attacked, you people were roaming around with the flag of the Congress Party flying high in your hands. This is the truth. Many people threw away the flag and ran away, you did not go, you stood firm. You were beaten with sticks, shot at, abused, but you did not step back even an inch. That is why I call you the Babbar Sher of the Congress Party. It is right that tickets are distributed in elections, tickets are distributed to big leaders, but I also want that our workers should also get a chance to become MLAs.

Leader of Opposition Shri Rahul Gandhi said - BJP’s ideology has spread unemployment in the entire country. For the first time you are seeing that unemployment is spreading in Jammu as well, inflation is increasing. We are fighting against this in the entire country.

Shri Rahul Gandhi said that there are different ideologies in the Congress Party. There are different ideologies because we know the entire country and we want that the different voices of the people of the country, different languages, different castes, all this should be heard. This is what I want to say to you. We want statehood. We want that whatever is in your heart, the way you want to run your state, you should run it in that way.