JAIPUR: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Thursday said the Congress needed to form a government in Madhya Pradesh and also repeat its previous success in his own state and Chhattisgarh before it can face the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Addressing the concluding session of a two-day party workshop here, the CM said the Rajasthan government has introduced excellent schemes but there should be proper "marketing" just as the BJP does at the grassroots-level.
Referring to complaints by some Congress leaders against a few bureaucrats in Rajasthan, he said officials will remain with them as long as they themselves are strong.
He said the Congress will form the government in Rajasthan again and should also return to power in Chhattisgarh.
He said the party also needed to be back in power in Madhya Pradesh, which is now run by a BJP government.
"Only then can we face the 2024 election," he said at the two-day workshop organised by the state unit of the Congress to discuss the decisions taken at the party's national-level "Chintan Shivir" in Udaipur last month.
Speaking a day after former CM Sachin Pilot said the Congress needed to evaluate why it has failed to return to power in Rajasthan in the past, Gehlot suggested that the party now needed to look ahead at the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Unlike the BJP the Congress was not "marketing" its achievements at the state-level, he said.
"Our people are sitting silent. If we do not speak, how will the people get to know."
Gehlot said Rahul Gandhi's remark at the "Chintan Shivir" that the party's connection with people has broken is an eye-opener.
"Rahul Gandhi has also said the BJP has sprinkled kerosene across the country. The situation is very alarming. The BJP has put democracy in danger," he charged.
He said that Congress faced a crisis during the time of former prime minister Indira Gandhi but the challenge now was different.
"Today we need to work a hundred times harder," he said.
He said the party organisation should be given importance and the feedback on people's demands and complaints should come to the Congress governments through it.
On Rajasthan Congress leaders raising questions over the state bureaucracy, the CM said if officers don't work, it takes just a minute to replace them.
"They are permanent (employees). The officers are with you only when they feel that you are strong," he said, adding that they will turn their back on them when they sense that the government is on its way out.
Recently, Sports Minister Ashok Chandna had expressed anguish over the conduct of CM's principal secretary Kuldeep Ranka.
Party MLA Ganesh Ghoghra and some other leaders have also expressed displeasure with the bureaucracy.