Rahul Gandhi won't be projected as PM face for 2019 Lok Sabha election, confirms Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram

The Congress party has confirmed that Rahul Gandhi will not be projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha election in 2019, former finance minister P. Chidambaram has said in an interview to News 18 Tamil.

The Congress has been in fray of stitching an alliance with different political parties, assembling a grand alliance with the of regional parties to take on the BJP and Narendra Modi’s juggernaut next year.

“We never said that we want Rahul Gandhi to be prime minister. When few Congressmen were talking about it, the AICC intervened and stop such talk. We want the BJP to be ousted. In its place, we want to see an alternative government which is progressive, respects freedom of individuals, doesn’t indulge in tax terrorism, gives protection to women and children, and uplifts farmers,” Chidambaram said.

“We want an alliance to be formed. The Prime minister will be decided by the alliance partners after the election,” he later added.

“The situation would change once the government is reduced to a caretaker one and we form a formidable alliance at the state level,” he said.

Chidambaram was optimistic about the change in the governance and said that situations would change. “The situation would change once the government is reduced to a caretaker one and we form a formidable alliance at the state level.”

The Congress president had said at the HT Leadership Summit that, “We have had discussions with allies and what we decided is that this is a two stage process stage — one is to get together and defeat BJP and stage two is, once the election is over then we will decide what happens.”

Also read: PNB scam row: Arun Jaitely's daughter Sonali Jaitley & son-in-law Jayesh Bakshi's firm took Rs