Expect Rahul to be Cong president this year: Jairam Ramesh

Rahul Gandhi is expected to become the Congress president this year and bring back India's grand old party to its past power and glory by promoting regional faces, according to senior party leader Jairam Ramesh.

"I expect that it would be in 2015. We are expecting that he will take over (as Congress President), and we are expecting that he would take over in 2015," Ramesh told PTI in an interview here today.

Gandhi is committed to creating a new cadre of leadership in states, he said."He recognises that we need state-level leadership. We need to create the Congress party that existed in the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, where we had a Kamaraj, Pratap Singh Kairon, Y B Chavan, B C Roy, G B Pant among others," Ramesh said.

"We need regional leadership because we are not only fighting national elections, we are also fighting state elections.

"He (Rahul) does not believe in the culture of nominations; he believes in people emerging as leaders; he does not believe in para-trooping," he said.

Ramesh dismissed reports of the old guard feeling insecure about their future with Rahul taking over the reins of the party from Sonia Gandhi and also downplayed the discordant notes on his leadership qualities.

"There is no old guard. There is no young guard. There is only one guard. There is only Congress guard," he said.

"Every organisation must undergo a process of renewal every 20 years...every 25 years and the Congress must project younger faces from a broader spectrum of society...give them positions of prominence, give them positions of authority," he emphasized.