Congress not interested in PM post, says Mallikarjun Kharge at Opposition meet

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the Congress party is not interested in the Prime Minister post. He said Congress was neither interested in power nor the post of Prime Minister. After reports of Congress turning down alliances, this is the first time Congress has accepted that it is open to sharing power.

In his inaugural address on the second day of the key Opposition meeting, he said, «Our intention in this meeting is not to gain power for ourselves. It is to protect our Constitution, democracy, secularism and social justice». He admitted to differences among opposition parties at the state level but noted that these are not ideological.

«These differences are not so big that we cannot put them behind us for the sake of the common man and middle class which is suffering due to inflation, for the sake of our youth who are suffering from unemployment, for the sake of the poor, Dalits, adivasis and the minorities whose rights are being crushed silently behind the scenes,» the Congress chief said. He said 26 parties are here together, and in government in 11 states today. «The BJP did not get 303 seats by itself.

It used the votes of its allies and came to power and then discarded them. Today, the BJP president and its leaders are running from state to state to patch up with their old allies,» he said. With a common objective to defeat BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, as many as 26 Opposition parties congregated in Bengaluru as a show of strength to deliberate on the issues including EVM machines, Lok Sabha seat sharing, drafting of a Common Minimum programme as well as the to decide on the name of the united front.