Rahul Gandhi is on leave from day to day party work for 42 days as he is preparing himself for taking up the responsibility of president of the Congress party from his mother Sonia Gandhi.
Those, inside or outside the party, who complain that he should not have skipped the important Budget session of parliament session, just don’t understand Rahul’s priorities. Sources close to him told us that Rahul has decided to give full priority to rebuild and strengthen the party’s organisation. He has decided to leave parliamentary politics for the next four years to other senior leaders led by Sonia Gandhi. He wants to concentrate only on how to connect to lost support base of the party by activating its grass root workers. In his meetings with hundreds of party leaders and workers in last six months to get the feedback about how and why party succumbed to such shameful size in parliament, he got hundreds of suggestions. Most were blunt suggestions to get rid of age old faces of party who have become unpopular due to several reasons.
Sources indicate that Rahul is all set to drop senior leaders like Digvijaya Singh, Janardan Dviwedi, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik and B K Hariprasada from his AICC team. He wants to induct Meenakshi Natarajan, Harish Choudhary, Jitendra Singh, Randeep Surjewala, Rajiv Satav and Manek Tagore as General Secretaries. He may retain Madhusudan Mistry and CP Joshi, with whom he enjoys a good rapport.
Sources say Motilal Vora wants to relinquish the post of treasurer due to health issues and old age but the Gandhi family wants to continue him. Kamal Nath and Ahmed Patel are contenders for the post. Since Sonia Gandhi will not be congress president, Ahmed Patel will automatically be removed from most powerful position of Political secretary to congress president and Rahul may not appoint anybody for this position to avoid coterie raaj.
Ghulam Nabi Azad and Veerappa Moily will remain important in the high command. Sonia Gandhi wants Satyavrata Chaturvedi, Shobha Ojha and Kumari Shelja as General Secretaries. Ojha at present is president of the party’s women’s wing and spokesperson. Many in the party circles are of the opinion that she is much better than Meenakshi Natarajan.
Rahul wants one young Brahmin leader from UP to be appointed as General Secretary. Jitin Prasada is lobbying for the post but Rahul received lot of complaints against Jitin when he was Union Minister so Rajeshpati Tripathi, Kamalapati Tripathi’s grandson may be inducted.
Renewed effort: Rahul Gandhi.