Don't have these visions: Rahul Gandhi on becoming India's next PM

Rahul Gandhi says he stands for defending what is right and that a decision on who should be the PM would be taken based on the results of 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

File photo

In May of this year, he had said that he is ready to be the Prime Minister of the country if his party won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. At the time, he was mocked at by rivals and his comments were frowned upon by several possible alliance partners as well. It appears that Rahul Gandhi may have taken a cue from the fallback of his previous claim and said on Saturday that he has no such visions at the moment.

On a day when he attacked the BJP government on issues ranging from job creation, freedom of the judiciary and the election commission as well as on why the likes of Vijay Mallya and Nirav Choksi are still roaming freely abroad, Rahul said that he stands for defending the country and its people at large. "I don't have these visions," he said when asked if he saw himself as the country's next Prime Minister during an interaction with the Indian Journalists' Association in London.  "I don`t see myself... I view myself fighting an ideological battle. This is really the change that has come in me after 2014."

Rahul also took on - yet again - the RSS. "There is a consensus among pretty much all leaders of the Opposition that the RSS is threatening the institutional order of India. They are systematically attacking organisations, and putting their people into them," he said. "I realised after 2014 that there is a risk to the Indian state, to the Indian way of doing things. I am defending that... how do I defend Indian institutional structures."

The Congress President then compared PM Narendra Modi to US President Donald Trump and said that both have failed to create jobs. He even slammed PM Modi's Independence Day speech and accused him of being arrogant. "I was sitting during his Independence Day address. He said before the national flag that before he came, India was a sleeping elephant and he woke it up. How much arrogance he has. The Prime Minister of India cannot understand if India has strength, it is not due to an individual, if sweat has been given, it has been given by farmers, small businessmen, industrialists, judges, everybody together."

While Congress - under Rahul - has ramped up its attack on the BJP ahead of crucial state elections later this year and the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, the BJP has launched counter-attacks with equal intensity as well. Party president Amit Shah has been focussing on spreading the message of BJP's work at the grassroots and has instructed party officials and workers of leaving no stone unturned to ensure people are aware of PM Modi's achievements.