Rahul Gandhi absent from Meira’s presidential nomination

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 28

When a host of senior Opposition leaders arrived at Parliament House Complex with their presidential nominee Meira Kumar on Wednesday morning, one very important person was missing in action.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi was nowhere to be seen when Kumar, 72, filed her nomination papers as the Opposition camp’s candidate for the July 17 presidential election which the party is describing as the battle of ideologies.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Gandhi has been away for 15 days. He took off in the middle of crucial Opposition discussions on presidential elections on June 13 and is yet to come back.

A section of leaders in the Congress earlier indicated Kumar’s formal filing of nomination papers had been stretched until the last day (today) to see if Rahul Gandhi could make it for the event. But that was not to be.

As Opposition veterans like Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, NCP’s Sharad Pawar, BSP’s Satish Mishra, TMC’s Derek O Brien, CPM’s Sitaram Yechury assembled at the gate of the Parliament to walk Kumar into the office of Lok Sabha Secretary General Anoop Mishra to file the nomination papers, Rahul Gandhi marked himself present through a tweet.

Against the ideology of divisiveness she represents the values that bind us as a nation&a ppl.Proud to have @meira_kumar ji as our candidate https://t.co/R7M5udN44y

— Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) June 28, 2017

“Against the ideology of divisiveness she represents the values that bind us as a nation and a people. Proud to have meira_kumar ji as our candidate,” Gandhi tweeted from his holiday, tagging Kumar’s earlier post which reads, “The ideological fight stands for what we feel is threatened in our society and for those voices that are forced to remain in the margins.”

Eyebrows have been raised in the Congress and larger Opposition camp over the absence of Gandhi at a crucial time when the presidential election campaign is at its height; farmers’ agitation is building and cracks are appearing in the Congress-RJD-JDU grand alliance in Bihar, which Congress had credited Rahul Gandhi with.

A Congress leader noted, “This is not quite the time to stay away from action. This is the time to be around 24x7.”

Gandhi has again managed to give fodder to his critics who call him a part time politician.