Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge’s Opening Remarks at the General Secretary /In-charges Meeting at the AICC Headquarters on February 19, 2025.

Welcome all of you to this meeting. First of all, I congratulate my new General Secretaries and In-charges for the new responsibility! In the last 2 CWC meetings, I had talked about the ‘Organizational Revamp’. Many decisions have been taken in that regard. Some more will be taken soon. It is your responsibility to make the organization stand strong from the State HQ to the Booth as soon as possible. You will have to go to the Booth for this work yourself, work hard, interact with the workers. We will have to involve our Frontals & Cells. I especially want to say about the INTUC that they are an integral part of us, involve them too in building the organization. If you yourself go to the grassroot level to Booth, Mandal, Block, District, State level, you will be able to add new people there. You will be able to bring trustworthy and ideologically strong people with you.

You can bring forward such people who can be very useful for the Party but did not get a chance. We should promote such people in the Congress Party’s ideology who stand with us like a rock even in adverse circumstances. Many times many people are inducted in haste to strengthen the Party. But weak people (in ideological terms) run away in difficult times. There is an old saying, ‘asal fisal padey or nakal chal padey’, we should stay away from such people.

Here I would like to tell you all about the most important thing i.e. ‘Accountability’. All of you will be ‘Accountable’ for the organization of the states under your charge and for the future election results.

You all know that our ‘Save Constitution Campaign’ is going on. We had decided on the ‘Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhan’ program in Belgaum. This will go on for the next one year. Under this, activities like padyatra, samvaad, corner meetings can be conducted. But the aim of every such programme should be the empowerment of the organization! Meanwhile, a new challenge has arisen in front of us. You know that these days the work of voter list manipulation is being done on a large scale in the elections. Rahul Gandhi ji also raised a question about this in the Lok Sabha.

All of you will realize that these days the names of our supporters are removed from the voter list. Or the name is removed and added to the adjacent booth. New names are added by the BJP just before the elections. This rigging has to be stopped at any cost. By the order of the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice was also added to the Selection Committee of the CHIEF ELECTION COMMISSIONER (CEC). Modi ji removed him as well. The government does not trust the impartiality of the Chief Justice of the country. This matter was to be heard in the Supreme Court today, but the government announced a new CEC before that. Rahul ji also said that what is the use of such a Selection Committee, where you are using LOP only for certification? Along with these things, the country is facing innumerable challenges. Inflation and unemployment remain a permanent issue. Modi government has completely failed in this matter. Despite Modiji’s visit, America is sending back Indian citizens handcuffed as before. Vegetarian passengers were given non-veg food. Our government has also failed to protest this insult in a proper manner.

America is hurting us deeply even in economic matters. They have imposed Tariff on us, but the Prime Minister has not even protested against it. They are forcibly imposing a loss-making deal on us, which our government is silently accepting. This is clearly an insult to India and its people. In the end, I want to tell our Delhi candidates, leaders and workers that you fought the elections with great hard work. There was a lack of resources, yet you tried to fight the elections strongly. The people of Delhi voted in favour of change.

Our endeavour for the next 5 years should be to try to emerge as the main opposition, by continuously fighting and leading mass movements on public issues. Only then will we become the first choice of the people.

I conclude my speech here. Now I would like to proceed with further action.