LUDHIANA: Citing Congress' comprehensive win in the Punjab Assembly polls, former Union minister Manish Tewari Sunday said the rights and interests of the party workers must be protected to ensure victory in the 2019 general elections.The senior Congress leader and national spokesperson of the party asserted that the secular and progressive forces of the country should also unite to save "the idea of India.""It is because of the hardwork of the party workers that had ensured a two-third victory for the Congress in Punjab in 2017," Tewari said on the sidelines of a workers meeting organised by the Punjab Congress General Secretary Gurmail Pahalwan."If party wants to repeat the feat it must ensure the rights and interests of (the) workers are protected and safeguarded," he added.Congress wrested power from the SAD-BJP alliance in Punjab with an overwhelming majority in the 2017 state assembly polls.Tewari congratulated the Congress workers for defeating the SAD-BJP in the state when the BJP had swept almost the entire country."I know you have great expectations from the government and these expectations are well deserved since you have faced the Akali-BJP onslaught for ten years and then ensured a sweeping victory for the party," he said."Now it is our turn to deliver on those promises and expectations," he added.Replying to a question on the registration of a case by Haryana police against former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and businessman Robert Vadra on Saturday in connection with alleged irregularities in a land deal in Gurgaon, Tewari said it was a case of political vendetta.Besides, the BJP government was feeling the heat "as it has no defence against the multi-billion Rafale scam, by purchasing the fighter aircrafts for the price two times more than what had been negotiated by the Congress-led UPA government".The BJP government was only trying to divert the attention and it will never succeed in its design, he said.The Congress leader also slammed the Akalis for criticising the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission which probed the sacrilege incidents of 2015 was not fair."The (Commission's) report has not been prepared by the Congress government or the party, but by an independent judicial commission. Who stops them (Akalis) to challenge the report on facts?" he asked.