Congress to launch 'Jan-Andolan'

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday announced a nationwide agitation against Rahul Gandhi's disqualification, alleging that the government has acted with lightning speed to "gag" him, and called for taking forward opposition unity in a systematic manner. Soon after Gandhi's disqualification by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the Congress leadership got into a huddle at the party headquarters and deliberated on the way forward.

Top Congress leaders, including former AICC chief Sonia Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretaries Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, K C Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Rajiv Shukla and Tariq Anwar, and senior leaders P Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khurshid and Pawan Kumar Bansal, among others, attended the meeting where the party decided to take this forward into a "Jan Andolan".

Congress general secretary Ramesh said, "We will go all over country as Rahul Gandhi was deliberately disqualified for raising his voice against the Modi government on the Adani issue, on the government's foreign policy and the clean chit given to China for incursions at the border."

Ramesh said the BJP is rattled with the success of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which, he said, became a movement. The Congress leadership has welcomed the statements of support of all opposition leaders, he said and asserted that "we should now take the issue of opposition unity forward in a systematic way". It was noted today that many opposition parties have condemned the action taken unilaterally with such lightning speed to disqualify Rahul Gandhi, he said. "Yes, there was a consensus that we should now take the job of building opposition unity in a systematic way. Everyday Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has been meeting floor leaders of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. So we are coordinating in Parliament and now coordination has to be outside Parliament," he said.