Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said there was a need to filter out leaders from the party who were working for the BJP in Gujarat, threatening to boot out as many as 40 of them.

Addressing party workers in Ahmedabad on the second day of his two-day Gujarat visit, Rahul said a section of the state leaders were conniving with the BJP and preventing the party from meeting the people’s expectations.

“Why has the Congress not been able to fulfil the expectations of the people of Gujarat for the last 20-30 years?” Rahul asked.

“The answer is that there are two types of people in the Gujarat Congress leadership and among the workers. Those who are honest with people, fight for them, respect them and have the ideology of the Congress in their heart. And the others who are cut off from the people, sit far away, do not respect them and
half of whom are with the BJP,” he said.

The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha said the party’s first job should be to eliminate these two groups. “Even if we have to remove 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 people, we are ready to do that to set an example,” he said.

Rahul said those who were secretly working for the BJP should come out and work openly for the BJP.

“Let’s see them. The BJP won’t have space for you. They will throw you out,” he said.

Rahul’s visit to Gujarat is aimed at reviving the party organisation ahead of the 2027 Assembly polls. The home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, which once used to be a Congress stronghold, has remained in the BJP’s grip since 1998.

The Congress had come close to smelling power in 2017 when the BJP, despite a high-voltage campaign by Modi, could win just 99 of the 182 seats while the Congress bagged 77. Since then, the Congress has seen a sharp decline in its presence in Gujarat and was reduced to just 17 seats in the 2022 polls.

Rahul acknowledged the challenges faced by the party in Gujarat, stressing that merely focusing on elections would not be enough to win back people’s trust. “Until we fulfil our responsibilities, the people of Gujarat will not elect us. We must first earn their trust,” he said.

He added that the people of Gujarat wanted an Opposition and not a B-team of the BJP and accused the party’s state leadership of holding back genuine party workers who wanted to take on the BJP.

“The farmers, traders, students and the common people are screaming for a new vision and the Congress can provide this vision easily. They do not want a B-team (of the BJP),” he said, claiming there was no dearth of committed leaders in the Congress.

“We have district- and block-level leaders who are babbar shers (lions) but they have a chain that pulls them back,” he added.

Rahul exhorted the party leaders to work hard by going among the people and listening to their opinions, claiming that the Congress can make a comeback in the state even if the party’s vote share increases by 5 per cent.