London/New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that the next general election will be fought between the BJP and an Opposition alliance that wants to stop institutions in India from being encroached upon.

His comments coincide with the Congress gearing up for the 2019 Lok Sabha election with the formation of three crucial committees to look after coordination, manifesto and publicity in the polls.  

At an interaction with the National Indian Students and Alumni Union (UK) at the London School of Economics, Mr Gandhi highlighted Opposition unity against the ruling BJP.

“We’ve agreed that our first priority is to defeat the BJP and stop this encroachment on the institutional space of India, stop the poison that is being spread, stop the division that is taking place,” he said on Friday.

Standing up for the oppressed is the idea of the Congress and every Indian has this embedded in them, he said.

Mr Gandhi said that there is a full-blown crisis in India and its called the job crisis and the Indian government is not accepting it. It’s simply saying that it does not exist.

While creating three new committees in the Congress ahead of the 2019, Mr Gandhi has maintained the old guard in the core set up of the party.

The nine-member core group committee comprises of A.K. Antony, Ghulam Nabi Azad, P. Chidambaram, Ashok Gehlot, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ahmed Patel, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and K.C.Veugopal. The publicity and manifesto committees have a mix of old-timers as well as fresh faces.

The 19-member manifesto committee includes veterans like Mr Chidambaram, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, former Union ministers Salman Khurshid, Shashi Tharoor and Kumari Selja, besides former Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma.

The 13-member publicity committee includes Randeep Surjewala, former ministers Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari and Rajeev Shukla.