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Reviving Congress fortunes : Rahul Gandhi for young blood |
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Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi has said that the major challenge facing the party is to attract young people and enable them to become stakeholders in decision-making. Speaking at an interaction with media persons in New Delhi on Jan. 23, he said that a new paradigm of politics is required to revive and rejuvenate the 122 year old party. Discounting the perception that the Congress has suffered a setback because of its defeats in the Gujarat and Himachal Assembly elections, Rahul Gandhi said, “Not at all. I do not think politics is like an on-off switch. You win, you lose.”
Rahul Gandhi admitted that there is a distance of political class from young people who do not feel part of politics. He said the youth want more access to decision-making and a new type of politics.
Rahul wants young blood in Congress
Rahul Gandhi said that before launching into a full-fledged political role, he has been focusing on “groundwork” at this stage. “I want to first have a sense of organisation to create some basic institutional structures rather than carrying on with an ad-hoc set-up,” he said, adding he was assessing the function¬ing of the youth wing and associating with their programmes.
From next month onwards, Rahul Gandhi will be undertaking a tour across the country to participate in Youth Congress ral¬lies, starting from south Indian states.
Rahul Gandhi sought to disapprove of his recent “chance” meeting with the BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate, L K Advani, being made public while maintaining that he considers the BJP a “political adversary”.
To questions about reports of his accidental meeting with Advani at the Delhi airport’s lounge whose details had surfaced, Gandhi said, “I have a certain obligation of not making private conversation public.” Advani had then reportedly advised the young leader that the two major national parties should treat each other as “political adversaries and not enemies”. Asked about his take on the BJP, Gandhi said, “They are our political adversary and we have fundamental differences.”
BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad, reacting to Rahul Gandhi’s remarks, said in New Delhi on Thursday, Jan. 24, the Rahul-Advani meeting was not a secret or private meeting requir¬ing confidentiality. He said Rahul Gandhi was trying to make too much of the chance meeting. While welcoming Rahul Gandhi’s statement holding the BJP to be just a political adversary of the Congress, Prasad without naming Sonia Gandhi said, “Comments like Maut Ka Saudagar (Merchants of death) made by her during the Gujarat Assembly campaign were not used against adversaries.”
Taking strong exception to the CPI(M) draft political reso¬lution which described the BJP as the principal enemy, Prasad said, “The BJP totally opposed this entire concept of terming political opponents as enemies and would like to remind CPI(M_ general secretary Prakash Karat that this mindset is “patently anti-democratic, irrelevant and undesirable in the interests of healthy democratic traditions.”
Sonia Gandhi refuses to take a holiday : Rahul
Rahul Gandhi in his interaction with mediapersons also made the point that his mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, has not taken a break in the past five years and will not listen even to her children when it comes to work.
“My sister Priyanka and I have been telling her for the last five years to take a holiday. But she refuses to do so.”
When a journalist suggested that he be persistent, Gandhi said his persistence would not work with his mother when she made up her mind on something. “My sister and I have tried every trick in the book,” he said. He was responding to a question on Sonia Gandhi’s recent ill health because of which she was hospitalised.
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