File photo: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi with mother and party chief Sonia Gandhi
Amid a huge controversy presided over by her son, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi today told reports that she will not comment on reports that he has left the country in anger over not being allowed to restructure the party they run.
Rahul Gandhi, the 44-year-old Vice President of the Congress, is taking a leave of absence from parliament, the party said yesterday. Mr Gandhi, the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which is the pivot of the Congress, has led the party to a series of electoral defeats since it was handed its worst drubbing in a national election last year at the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mrs Gandhi told NDTV yesterday that her son is on leave for a few days. Mr Gandhi wants time to think, party officials said yesterday, and to assess his role. But there is aggressive speculation that Mr Gandhi's catalogue of grievances include not being able to replace the "old guard" that has advised his mother with his own team, and that he resents the perception that he is responsible for electoral disasters including last month's Delhi result which saw the Congress unable to win even one seat in a city-state it governed for 15 consecutive years.
Mr Gandhi's decision to travel abroad comes during a key parliamentary session which will see his party, as well as others in the opposition, try to block government efforts to ease land acquisition laws, the centre piece of its reform effort to speed an economic recovery. For years, Mr Gandhi had positioned himself as a champion of farmers' rights, pledging that he would not allow their rights to be sacrificed for industrial projects. Now, at a time when that issue is centrestage, he will be missing.