Veronique when he was at university in England, also said he wasn’t sure when he would settle down.
In the years since his first election victory, Rahul and the people around him have made no reference to his ‘best friend’, Veronique. For the Party which still faces barbs from the Opposition on grounds of Sonia’s Italian roots, even though she made this country her home more than forty years ago, this is a sensitive subject.
Between Two Plenaries: The Rise of Rahul Gandhi
Five years is a reasonably long time in politics. It is—if all goes well for the incumbent government—the gap between two general elections. Since Lok Sabhas have gone back to lasting their full terms in the past decade or so, a new member of the Lok Sabha would, in five years, go from being a newbie to a second-term MP if he or she is re-elected. And some would hope to play a slightly bigger role than they did the last time around. But, with Rahul Gandhi being no ordinary MP, it was only to be expected that in the five years that lapsed between the Congress’s 82nd plenary session at Hyderabad in January 2006 and the one in December 2010 held in Delhi to mark the completion of 125 years of the Party, his growth trajectory would be steeper than that of any other young politician. The gap between the two plenaries established him as one of the most powerful general secretaries of the Indian National Congress ever. It could probably also go down as one of the most significant five-year periods in Rahul’s political journey. The proceedings of the 2010 plenary established that beyond doubt.
The Hyderabad session opened on 21 January 2006, at the GMC Balayogi Stadium at Gachibowli which had been decked up for the event. By the second week of January, the entire city of Hyderabad looked like the venue for the grand old party’s plenary. The area around the stadium was named Rajiv Nagar, temporarily, after former Congress prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. It is common practice among political parties to name the venues of their plenaries and party congresses after their leaders. The party documents and resolutions carry these names, bearing witness to the Party’s attempts to immortalize their leaders. It is at these plenaries which take place every few years that the existing leadership meets to assess the course charted by the Party, and plans for the future.
At the beginning of the Hyderabad plenary, it seemed as if the course for the future would be decided by the workers instead of by the leadership. The demand for a greater role for Rahul had reached a crescendo. On the eve of the plenary, Jitin Prasada, the young, first-time MP from Shahjahanpur (and son of a former Congress leader and vice-president Jitendra Prasada) had written to the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president Salman Khurshid that the youth of UP wanted the Amethi MP to take up a bigger role. Prasada’s letter said that he was writing on behalf of the youth of the state whose aspiration was to see Rahul play the leader in Congress affairs. He said he had travelled widely in UP since the 2004 Lok Sabha polls and come back with this feedback. Prasada’s letter obviously found its way to the press. Asked about the letter, he and Khurshid, or for that matter any other Congress leader, were only too eager to talk about the demand and stress the need for Rahul’s inclusion in the Party’s top brass.
Congressmen were shouting slogans asking for Rahul to be included in the Party’s apex decision-making body, the CWC, and bestowing upon him a ‘larger role’. Though the Congress, fresh after its surprise win of the mid-2004 general election, did not look like it needed any saving, ‘
Rahul lao, Congress bachao
(Bring Rahul Gandhi, save the Congress).’ slogans rent the air outside the precincts of the stadium. The AICC, the state committee workers and the mid-level netas jostled for airtime on channels, hoping to be seen as sloganeering to demand Rahul’s promotion
In the years since his first election victory, Rahul and the people around him have made no reference to his ‘best friend’, Veronique. For the Party which still faces barbs from the Opposition on grounds of Sonia’s Italian roots, even though she made this country her home more than forty years ago, this is a sensitive subject.
Between Two Plenaries: The Rise of Rahul Gandhi
Five years is a reasonably long time in politics. It is—if all goes well for the incumbent government—the gap between two general elections. Since Lok Sabhas have gone back to lasting their full terms in the past decade or so, a new member of the Lok Sabha would, in five years, go from being a newbie to a second-term MP if he or she is re-elected. And some would hope to play a slightly bigger role than they did the last time around. But, with Rahul Gandhi being no ordinary MP, it was only to be expected that in the five years that lapsed between the Congress’s 82nd plenary session at Hyderabad in January 2006 and the one in December 2010 held in Delhi to mark the completion of 125 years of the Party, his growth trajectory would be steeper than that of any other young politician. The gap between the two plenaries established him as one of the most powerful general secretaries of the Indian National Congress ever. It could probably also go down as one of the most significant five-year periods in Rahul’s political journey. The proceedings of the 2010 plenary established that beyond doubt.
The Hyderabad session opened on 21 January 2006, at the GMC Balayogi Stadium at Gachibowli which had been decked up for the event. By the second week of January, the entire city of Hyderabad looked like the venue for the grand old party’s plenary. The area around the stadium was named Rajiv Nagar, temporarily, after former Congress prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. It is common practice among political parties to name the venues of their plenaries and party congresses after their leaders. The party documents and resolutions carry these names, bearing witness to the Party’s attempts to immortalize their leaders. It is at these plenaries which take place every few years that the existing leadership meets to assess the course charted by the Party, and plans for the future.
At the beginning of the Hyderabad plenary, it seemed as if the course for the future would be decided by the workers instead of by the leadership. The demand for a greater role for Rahul had reached a crescendo. On the eve of the plenary, Jitin Prasada, the young, first-time MP from Shahjahanpur (and son of a former Congress leader and vice-president Jitendra Prasada) had written to the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president Salman Khurshid that the youth of UP wanted the Amethi MP to take up a bigger role. Prasada’s letter said that he was writing on behalf of the youth of the state whose aspiration was to see Rahul play the leader in Congress affairs. He said he had travelled widely in UP since the 2004 Lok Sabha polls and come back with this feedback. Prasada’s letter obviously found its way to the press. Asked about the letter, he and Khurshid, or for that matter any other Congress leader, were only too eager to talk about the demand and stress the need for Rahul’s inclusion in the Party’s top brass.
Congressmen were shouting slogans asking for Rahul to be included in the Party’s apex decision-making body, the CWC, and bestowing upon him a ‘larger role’. Though the Congress, fresh after its surprise win of the mid-2004 general election, did not look like it needed any saving, ‘
Rahul lao, Congress bachao
(Bring Rahul Gandhi, save the Congress).’ slogans rent the air outside the precincts of the stadium. The AICC, the state committee workers and the mid-level netas jostled for airtime on channels, hoping to be seen as sloganeering to demand Rahul’s promotion
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