Rahul Gandhi calls for Congress-ruled states to be 'best-run' in India

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday called for states ruled by the party to showcase themselves as the best-run regions of the country, adding that each chief minister belonging to the political organisation must guide them in this endeavour.

"We should showcase that the nine Congress states in India are the best run states in the country. Each Congress state should focus on at least two to three transformational programmes and make them the best in the country. The Chief Ministers present here have a great amount of wisdom and experience in the development paradigm of the party. We must be guided by them," Gandhi said, while speaking at the Congress Chief Ministers' meet in the national capital.

The Gandhi scion further accused the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre of taking away power from the people.

"All of the Congress's successes have focused transferring power to the people. I believe that the most powerful asset that our country has is the genius and capability of our people. However, the BJP is reversing the people's empowerment process and taking away power from the people. We must defend our rights-based paradigm and defend our efforts towards decentralisation," he said.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, meeting with the party's incumbent Chief Ministers, accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA regime of deliberately passing Parliament threats to the civil society and warnings to the judiciary to dismantle the edifice of the welfare state built up over the decades by successive Congress governments.

The meeting, which was aimed at forming a political strategy to take on the NDA Government for its attitude towards the Congress-ruled and other non-BJP ruled states, was the first such meeting called by the Congress president after the party's drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.