Congress General-Secretary Digvijaya Singh tells Kavita Chowdhury the Congress is not afraid of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. He repeats his assessment that a system of dual power centres hasn't worked and should not be repeated. Edited excerpts:
It is increasingly becoming clear that despite the turmoil within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Narendra Modi could be Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) prime ministerial candidate. Is the Congress apprehensive of this and, therefore, shying away from projecting Rahul Gandhi as the party's PM candidate?
The Congress has nothing to do with who is NDA's PM candidate. We'll compare Modi with Sheila Dikshit or Tarun Gogoi. Rahul Gandhi has been given the task to plan for the 2014 elections by the Congress president (Sonia Gandhi). This Modi-versus-Rahul face-off is a total media creation. The Congress is not afraid of anyone. Modi is of no consequence to the Congress. He has hardly any presence outside Gujarat. The development projections that he reels off are blatant lies. He's a pracharak who is trained to speak lies. And, if you speak lies consistently, it will be considered to be the truth - it's the (Joseph) Goebbels theory, who spearheaded Fascist propaganda. I am squarely comparing Modi to a Fascist as the Sangh ideology is Fascist. Modi may be of some consequence to Nitish Kumar (Bihar CM) or L K Advani or other leaders in BJP but not to the Congress. The Congress does not believe in projecting PM and CM candidates.
But you did project Amarinder Singh in Punjab.
There have been exceptions but we prefer to let our elected representatives decide on the leader.
However, your coalition partner, Nationalist Congress Party, and its chief, Sharad Pawar, have asked for a United Progressive Alliance (UPA) alliance meeting to decide on the PM candidate.
That is something the UPA coordination committee will have to decide.
There has been a lot of activity on the Congress' media management front since Rahul Gandhi took over as vice-president.
The Congress vice-president appointed me as the chairman of a sub-group on communication and publicity to draw up a media strategy and response system for the Congress and also draw a media campaign strategy for the polls. It is aimed that the response to news will be more uniform now.
So, is the new set-up overtaking the current AICC media set-up with its spokespersons?
No, the new six-member team is headed by the AICC media incharge (Janardan Dwivedi ) and the whole team and the Youth Congress team working on media will all work under the chairmanship of Dwivedi.
There is a view that the new media team was created in the wake of the conflicting voices from the party over the "twin power centres" comment made by you.
No, this media committee proposal has been with me for the past two-and-half months. But a need was felt to have a more uniform news response system.
Apart from the family name and the vision he laid out in his speech at the Confederation of Indian Industry, Rahul Gandhi has had "no shows" in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. What does he bring to the table to lead the party in 2014?
Why do you forget 2004 and 2009 Parliamentary elections, when he led the party campaign in several states? In Rajasthan and Maharashtra, we even formed governments. He got us 22 seats in Uttar Pradesh.
