Rahul Gandhi on Saturday asked party members who are not committed to fighting for the truth to go and join the BJP, his comments coming in poll-bound Gujarat where the Congress has been beset by defections.

Rahul, speaking on the concluding day of a three-day brainstorming session in Dwarka, betrayed concern at the recurring desertions and possible sabotage — problems the party unit has been grappling with for the last two decades.

Instead of adopting a conciliatory note, he said: “I need only five leaders who are committed to fighting the BJP in the state. Those five leaders have to find two more and the BJP will be uprooted here.”

He added: “We have to identify the leaders who work on the ground and separate them from those who sit in air-conditioned rooms, pontificate and create disturbances.

“Those who fight, those who are with the truth, are ours. We need them. The others can go. We can gift them to the BJP. They can take more Kauravas. The day we get 25 committed leaders, the BJP will be thrown out.”

Rahul peppered his speech with hints about sabotage from within, strengthening the perception that a segment in the Gujarat Congress had never fought the BJP seriously since the emergence of Narendra Modi in the state.

“In the last Assembly election, I was told by a senior leader here that the fight is very difficult, (that) we won’t get more than 40-45 seats,” Rahul said.

“We launched a fierce battle and, slowly, they started conceding that the political ambience was changing. Finally, six-seven seats made the difference and the BJP just scraped through.”

Rahul argued that the situation was far worse for the BJP now. “The CBI, ED, media, police, criminals… a new outfit every day do not make any difference,” he said.

“The truth is simple, it looks like that,” he added, pointing to a Mahatma Gandhi photograph hanging over the stage.

“Gandhi spread his message to the world. When I went to South Africa as a 19-year-old boy and asked Nelson Mandela how he had spent 26 years in jail, seven years in solitary confinement, he told me, ‘I was never alone. Mahatma Gandhi was always with me’. With Gandhi’s strength, the government was dislodged in South Africa and you say you can’t evict the BJP government?”

Rahul went on: “The confusion is in your mind. You have already won. You are not accepting this truth. The BJP hasn’t damaged the Congress as much as it has hurt the people of Gujarat. They have suffered Covid mismanagement; they have seen unemployment and the destruction of business.

“People are looking up to the Congress and if we present a credible agenda and blueprint for governance before them, the BJP is out. The people only want to know what the Congress will do and who will do it. Just give me one thing more — don’t accept that you will lose till the battle is over, and you will win.”

State unit chief Jagdish Thakor and the central leadership’s Gujarat minder, Raghu Sharma, indicated that a new leadership structure was likely to emerge with greater responsibility for the youth, bluntly telling the entrenched forces not to create hurdles.

The Congress intends to adopt a Dwarka declaration, presenting before the people a comprehensive agenda of governance long before the Assembly elections, due in December.