Rahul Gandhi is like captain who jumps out when ship is sinking: Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Senior BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan said Thursday that Rahul Gandhi resigning as Congress president was akin to captain of the ship jumping out when it is sinking.

The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister was addressing a press conference here.

"The Congress president has rendered his resignation. I had heard that when a ship sinks, its captain tries to save it till the end. But here the captain himself has jumped out," Chouhan said.

"Mahatma Gandhi had said immediately after independence that the Congress' objective was to gain freedom and now it should be dissolved.

"I think after Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru also said so. Now, the fake Gandhi will certainly fulfill the dream of the real Gandhi and will finish off Congress," Chouhan said.

The BJP did not waste time in rejoicing after the Lok Sabha victory but started working on expanding the organisation with a membership drive, he said.

"This is not for electoral gains. The BJP is not an election-oriented party. The BJP is a campaign for national rejuvenation. While we are working on expansion of the organisation, parties like Congress are on ventilator," he said.

"When one should dig in and work hard, the president of that party (Congress) is missing from action," he added.

Asked if his party will have the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh dissolved, Chouhan said the BJP was not toppling governments anywhere.

"There is no one in Congress who will do crisis management. Who would Congress MLAs go to as there is no one to listen to them? If it falls under its own weight, what can we do?" the BJP vice president said.

Chouhan, who is in charge of the saffron party's membership drive, said it planned to recruit 200 new members in the area covered by each polling booth in Maharashtra.

-PTI

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