New Delhi, June 23
Amid uncertainty over Rahul Gandhi continuing as Congress president, senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said on Sunday that a ‘non-Gandhi’ could be party chief but the Gandhi family must remain active within the organisation. The BJP objective is to have a “Gandhi-mukt Congress” so as to have a “Congress-mukt Bharat”, he claimed.
It would be best that Rahul remains party chief, but at the same time, Rahul’s own wishes must also be respected, Aiyar said. “I am sure we can survive if we have to without a Nehru-Gandhi as the titular head of the party, provided the Nehru-Gandhis remain active in the party and help resolve a crisis in case serious differences arise,” he said in an interview.
Aiyar said Rahul had given the party about a month to find a replacement and there had been confabulations within the Congress over the issue, with the feeling in the party overwhelmingly in favour of Rahul staying on.
“I know it is BJP’s objective to have a Gandhi-mukt Congress so as to have a Congress-mukt Bharat. I don’t think we should be falling into the trap of thinking that they have discovered something that we are not able to discover,” Aiyar said. He cited instances when people from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family were made presidents — from N Dhebar to Brahmananda Reddy. The same model could be adopted now, he said.
“I have every confidence that whether with Rahul Gandhi at the helm or somebody else, the party will fight back and resume in the fullness of time its position as the natural leader of what I call the Idea of India Movement,” he said. — PTI
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2J8eRF4
via Today’s News Headlines
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