Mathura:
Steve Jobs' resurrection of Apple's fortunes was the example cited by
Rahul Gandhi as he asked his party workers to rebuild the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, which votes in two years for its next government.
Mr Gandhi visited a temple before his speech in Mathura, roughly 120-minutes drive from Delhi. Mr Jobs, the founder of Apple, was the focus of a large part of his short address, with the
Congress Vice President acknowledging that his party has been sidelined to the fringes of India's most populous state. "We are number 4 (among parties in the state), but our ideology is number 1... If we keep at it, we will be number 1."
The 45-year-old then asked Congressmen to
"attack Prime Minister Modi...but remember, he is best at attacking himself". This, Mr Gandhi alleged, is evidenced by the PM's failed attempts at delivering basic promises- the 15 lakhs he pledged to deposit in every citizen's bank account by recovering black money or untaxed money stashed in foreign accounts, and the land reforms that he was forced to withdraw after the Congress successfully portrayed them as "anti-farmer".
The Congress in the last state election in Uttar Pradesh won just 28 of nearly 400 seats; in the national election last year, it landed two of a possible 80 seats.
Mr Gandhi's leadership was this weekend criticized by Captain Amarinder Singh, senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister of Punjab. Mr Gandhi today appeared to offer that as a positive, stating that has party thrives on differences in opinion, unlike the BJP and its ideological parents, the RSS. "If this were the RSS, (chief) Mohan Bhagwat declare the sky is black and you would salute him," he alleged.