New Delhi, Nov 5: Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Friday gave clear indication that Rahul Gandhi may be asked to take over the reins of the party soon as working president.
“Rahul has to come in the mainstream. Right now he is looking only after Youth Congress and the student wing of the party. I feel now he has to look after us all,” Digvijay Singh told reporters.
Party sources indicated that Congress president Sonia Gandhi may soon hand over, if not her formal designation, to Rahul Gandhi, or at best, hand over the levers of party control to her son.
Rahul Gandhi is presently in the thick of the crucial electoral battle for Uttar Pradesh, selecting candidates and preparing the electoral base for the party to register a good showing in the state where the party has lost power 22 years ago.
Last month, Rahul surprised many when he sat through Sonia Gandhi's meetings with party leaders of poll-bound Punjab and Uttarakhand tochalk out electoral strategies. He even went into the details of election strategy for the two states.
Senior Congress leaders say it is now just a matter of time before Rahul Gandhi steps out of the shadows to take control of the party floundering in the face of angry UPA allies, anti-corruption agitation and pricerise.
In that event, Rahul may have to leave his current work of energizing Youth Congress and NSUI, where he had conducted elections for the first time in several years.
Rahul has been paying attention to party politics in Rajasthan too, where after a severe communal violence in Alwar, he paid a surprise visit, following which the chief minister had to be summoned to the capital.
Rahul is also engaged in talks with Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal for an electoral tie-up in UP.
The Times of India has reported that Trusted Sources, a UK-based consultancy focused on emerging economies, predicted that Rahul could take over as prime minister soon which, in turn, set off whispers of an early succession.
The report, which said that corruption charges had dented the incumbent's stock, was put together by the India research director of Trusted Sources, Amitabh Dubey, who is reputed to be a close friend of the Congress heir apparent.
Although Congress sources discount the possibility of Rahul joining the government, they agree that he is now ready to lead from the front. “He will be focused on re-building the organization as he takes centrestage”, said a senior Congress leader.
Rahul's stronger engagement comes amid Sonia Gandhi's health problems and a widely-felt urgency to stem speculations about a leadership vacuum.
Sonia's continuing recovery process may push Rahul into virtually heading the poll campaigns in Uttarakhand, a tricky terrain that requires a lot of travel, and in Punjab.
Given Sonia's pre-eminence among partymen, she is expected to kickstart the poll season with a visit to Uttarakhand to lay the foundation of a railway line next week. But Rahul is expected to take over thereafter.
