The Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday accused the BJP government at the Centre of ‘arm twisting’ and ‘running’ the Tamil Nadu government.

He also slammed the Union government for the violence and unrest in Kashmir for the last past few months. “They (BJP) are creating a problem for the country by their incompetence and by trying to utilise Kashmir as a political asset”, he said.

Speaking to the media after having discussions with party functionaries at the state Congress headquarters, Sathyamurthy Bhavan, he said “The BJP is convinced that they run Tamil Nadu. The BJP believes that the only people who should be in power in India are people who believe in the RSS. The BJP believes that anybody else, regardless of who he is whether it be Congress or any opposition party, should not exist in India”.

He also charged the saffron party with trying to enforce the belief that there should be no expression of any feelings other than the feelings of their movement.

He said Tamil culture is the way people of TN express themselves and we have to respect that. “Each Indian state has its own way of culture, own way of thinking, its own way of expressing itself and its own food”, Rahul said.

Asserting that the differences are India’s strength and not its weakness, he said “The BJP is absolutely convinced that these are India’s weaknesses and these different ideas need to be crushed.”

Explaining the importance of Saturday’s meeting, he said the opposition parties wanted to tell the people of Tamil Nadu and the country that India is not one idea and India is thousands of ideas”. He said the one idea of RSS is never ever going to crush the thousands of different ideas here. “We will not allow it”, Rahul said, adding that the opposition would fight together and defeat the BJP and RSS.

The ‘cultural imperialism’ of the BJP is not acceptable to the people of India, the Congress leader said, “We are not going to allow one single idea of RSS, a bankrupt idea to invade the country”.

Earlier, he met DMK president M. Karunanidhi at the latter’s Gopalapuram residence. Coming out the house, he wished that Karunanidhi should become 100 per cent fit.

Reacting to a query on Kashmir, he said he warned finance minister Arun Jaitley that the centre is mishandling Kashmir, but he brushed him aside and said Kashmir was peaceful. He charged Modi with mishandling Kashmir. “Kashmir is India’s strength, but the current government is making it ‘India’s weakness’”.
CPM general secretary, his CPI counterpart Sudhakar Reddy and CPI national secretary D. Raja met Karunanidhi. Speaking to the media, Raja said the approach of the opposition on the Presidential candidate would be decided after the stand of BJP is known. The opposition wanted a President who will save secularism, he added.