Congress leader Rahul Gandhi charged on Thursday that the BJP-RSS are only interested in power and are working towards dividing the country as they not care about the sorrow and pain of people.

Addressing a Youth Congress programme virtually, Gandhi said, "The BJP-RSS only want power and can do anything to get power. For power, they will burn Manipur, they will burn the entire country. They don't care about the sorrow and pain of the country." Be it Haryana, Punjab or Uttar Pradesh, "they will sell the entire country as they only want power," Gandhi alleged and added that for the Congress, this is the fight.

"On one side, you are sitting and you have love for the country and whenever the country is hurt or its citizens are hurt, you will also get hurt and you will be sad. But they do not have any such feeling in their heart. The RSS-BJP people do not feel any pain. Because they do the work of dividing the country," he told the Indian Youth Congress workers.

The Congress shared excerpts of Gandhi's speech on its Twitter handle.

The opposition led by the Congress has been demanding a statement from the prime minister on the situation in ethnic strife-torn Manipur, followed by a full-fledged discussion on it.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.