BENGALURU: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday laid bare his ambition of becoming the next prime minister of India, saying he is ready for the leadership role in the event of Congress emerging as the single largest party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

“Why not? A lot depends on how well the Congress does in the elections. If it emerges as the biggest party, yes,” Rahul said, when media persons sought his reaction on whether he is aspiring to be PM in 2019. Rahul was speaking on the sidelines of a public function in Bengaluru. Last September too, the Gandhi scion, at an event in Berkeley University, US, had said he was ready to be the party’s PM candidate for the 2019 general elections.

In an interaction with some prominent personalities of Bengaluru at the launch of the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, a platform to propagate liberal, secular and republican values across the country, Rahul said: “You may laugh at me for saying this, but I am sure it is highly unlikely that the BJP will form a government at the Centre in 2019. Narendra Modi won’t be the next PM. The BJP is already facing anti-incumbency in all states ruled by it and it will be crushed to defeat by a united opposition led by the Congress. In UP, the saffron party won’t win more than five seats on its own,” he added.

Rahul also accused the BJP and RSS of making a systematic attempt at capturing all political institutions in the country to discard democracy and push their hidden agenda. “The Congress, on the other hand, is resisting this. The party believes in running these institutions to safeguard democracy,” he said.

He took on BJP chief Amit Shah , saying, “Shah has been accused of murder. I don’t think he has a lot of credibility. People in India forget that the BJP president is a murder accused. The party still talks about honesty and decency.”

Stressing women’s empowerment in politics, Rahul said he wanted to see at least 10 women chief ministers in the country from Congress in the next 10 years. “I know that my statement will annoy many men here, mainly senior leaders, but that is the agenda I am going to set,” he said, adding that he wasn’t impressed with the Karnataka Congress , which gave just a dozen tickets to women in the assembly polls.

To a question on Dalits, Rahul recounted a story he had heard from his grandmother. “Once my grandmom was watching an ice hockey match between Germany and a lesser-known nation. The Germans had dominated the entire match before the other side scored one last goal. That was the time she stood up and applauded them. However, the German supporters forced her to sit down and she obliged. But she later regretted doing that. ‘I should have continued to support the weaker team,’ she said. That is my stand on Dalits, minorities and other weaker sections,” Rahul explained.

