Headlines
Rahul Gandhi takes break; Congress defends move, BJP slams absence
New Delhi, Feb 23
Congress vice president
Rahul Gandhi has taken "leave of absence" to reflect on a series of
electoral defeats for his party and chart its future course, the party
announced Monday, drawing an critical response for the BJP who slammed
him for "holidaying" during the "important" budget session of
parliament.
In a brief interaction with the media here, party
president Sonia Gandhi said: "He (Rahul has been given a few weeks. He
needs some time."
Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi
earlier said the vice president requested "some time to reflect on
recent events and the future course for the party. This introspection is
important for the party in view of the forthcoming All India Congress
Committee session".
"The AICC session is of crucial importance
and Rahul Gandhi will give inputs for it. So he has been given leave of
absence after which he will come back to active participation," Singhvi
told reporters here.
However, the entire duration of absence is
not known, a party source told IANS. It was also not known where Rahul
Gandhi was though a report by Times Now TV channel said he had gone to
Bangkok last week.
The explanation for the leave cut no ice with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Hitting
out at Rahul Gandhi, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv
Pratap Rudy said: "This only shows the seriousness of the Congress
party. He is holidaying during the budget session."
Part
spokesperson Sambit Patra questioned the sagacity of choosing the
"important" budget session, especially when Rahul Gandhi who is "not
only a party vice president but also a respected parliamentarian".
Patra
told IANS that Gandhi's "presence in the parliament would have added to
the level of discussions on any issue by the most important leader of
the most important party in the opposition".
The absence of Rahul
Gandhi from the session, which started Monday with President Pranab
Mukherjee's address to a joint sitting, assumes greater significance at a
time when parliament is likely to witness a standoff on six ordinances
including the controversial one amending the land acquisition bill, that
have to be replaced by laws.
However, Congress general secretary
Ajay Maken urged all to refrain from "reading too much" into the
absence that had no bearing on ensuring an effective agitation over the
land ordinance.
"Rahul Gandhi is not an office bearer of the
parliamentary party. So the work of the Congress within the house would
carry on uninterrupted," Maken told IANS.
Expressing similar
sentiments, party leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said the
Congress would operate under the guidance of Sonia Gandhi.
Also
defending the Congress vice chief who is mostly in news for frequent
no-shows when the house is in session, Congress MP Rajiv Shukla said:
"He attended the last session very regularly. And he is always present
in the house regularly. Now he has gone for some important work
somewhere, that does not mean this issue should be blow out of
proportion."
However, Nationalist Congress Party MP Praful Patel
said since parliament was "an important forum in a democracy where we
can discuss and debate, it becomes imperative on all MPs to utilize this
platform and miss no opportunity to voice the needs of the people they
represent in the house".
But Rahul Gandhi does not face an easy
task. The recent Delhi assembly polls - where the party was unable to
win a single seat - was the fifth defeat in a row since the 2014 general
election and posed a formidable challenge for it to reverse its sliding
fortunes ahead of the Bihar assembly polls later this year.
The
party vote share has been on a down-slide, dipping to 15 percent in the
2014 general elections and further plummeting to 9.7 percent in the
Delhi assembly polls this month.
Hundreds of thousands of
traditional Congress supporters from all social segments shifted en
masse to the 27-month-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), enabling it to sweep
the polls with 67 seats in the 70-member Delhi assembly, relegating the
BJP to mere three seats and Congress with none.
The Congress now governs only Assam, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh.