Congress should learn how to build a party from Indira Gandhi: Prithviraj Chavan

MUMBAI: Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan today said the Congress needs to learn from late Indira Gandhi on "how to build the party from zero".

"Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to support Independent candidate V V Giri for the post of President was a decisive stand that split the Congress into two factions.

"The elections in the post-Emergency period resulted into a huge backlash to the Congress but Gandhi's extreme efforts helped the Congress (I) faction to become a pan-national party," Chavan told the Legislative Assembly.

He was speaking on the state government's proposal to honour contribution made by Gandhi, as 2017 happens to be her birth centenary year.

Chavan, a Congress veteran who is believed to have ears of the party president Sonia Gandhi, had served as the Minister of State in PMO under then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Recently, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had admitted that the Congress was passing through an "existential crisis".

Meanwhile, Chavan also spoke about censorship and its relevance in today's context.

"Indira Gandhi introduced Emergency which was followed by censorship. With censorship imposed on news and dissemination of information, she got to see only good news. She went ahead with elections and lost severely," the former Union minister said.

"If there is no censorship, then you get to know what exactly is happening in the society. You get to know ground reality," he said.