Sonia, Rahul must speak more, says Chidambaram

With growing disquiet in the Congress after its successive electoral losses, former finance minister P Chidambaram has said Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi should “speak more” and speed up reorganising the party to take up the job of “true opposition”.

Chidambaram also admitted that the controversial land deals of Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, created a “perception problem” for the Congress.

His remarks come at a time when there is a growing feeling within the Congress that the party lost the battle of perception with the BJP which succeeded in trouncing them in the elections to the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies of Maharashtra and Haryana.

After successive losses, Congress workers’ morale is at its lowest, and the entire rank and file of the party is awaiting directions from the Gandhis to chart the path of revival.
Chidambaram, also a senior spokesperson of the party, said the re-organisation of the Congress was overdue and he along with others had urged the leadership to speed it up.

“…not only I, others too, have urged that the re-organization that was promised in the May 19th CWC resolution is overdue, we should get on with the job of the re-organising the party and get on with the larger task of being an effective, strong, robust opposition to the government,” he said in an interview to a news channel.

Asked if someone other than a member of the Gandhi family can become the president of the Congress, Chidambaram said “I think so, someday, someday yes”. But he was quick to add, “I do not know” when asked about the timeline for such an eventuality.

The Congress has set in motion the process of holding organisational polls at all levels, which would culminate in the election of party president by next July. Sonia Gandhi has been the longest serving party president having been elected to the post in March 1998.
On questions raised on Rahul’s leadership, Chidambaram said there was wide acceptance of Rahul Gandhi among the younger members of the Congress party. At the same time, he said Sonia Gandhi remained the “numero uno” in the Congress as long as she held the post of the president of the party.

Asked whether he was disappointed by the fact that Sonia has ceded the space to her son, he said, installing Rahul Gandhi as the vice-president was a “deliberate strategy” to handover the baton to the next generation of the leadership.