Indira and Modi? No comparison, says Sonia Gandhi

New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi broke her silence in an interview to a private TV channel and said there was no comparison between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the late Indira Gandhi, rejecting suggestions that her party lacked leaders to take him on. She added she was confident the Congress could come back to power “with a full majority”.

Asked if she was troubled by the fact that Mr Modi was compared with the late PM as a strong personality, Mrs Gandhi said: “It doesn’t trouble me as I don’t believe in it. I have my own clear views about it. There is no comparison. Absolutely not.”

“Every era in politics or history has its own problems, its own leaders and its own opposition. I think the Congress Party is taking on the present dispensation,” Mrs Gandhi told India Today TV.

Speaking in Allahabad, where she had gone for the Indira Gandhi birth centenary celebrations, she rejected claims that her party didn’t have a tough leader like Mr Modi, and said: “I don’t agree with that.” She recalled Indira Gandhi was ridiculed, insulted and made fun of from within even more than outside when she entered politics, became Congress president and later PM. “There was nothing she did was right. (But) she could overcome that,” Mrs Gandhi said.