Sonia seeks rest, not retirement

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 16

Sonia Gandhi may have vacated the Congress president’s office after serving in the post for 19 years but she is not going anywhere from active politics yet.

This unambiguous message came from none other than Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Vadra who said her mother would be defending the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha segment in the 2019 General Election.

“There is no question of me contesting from Rae Bareli. My mother will be contesting from there,” Priyanka said at the AICC headquarters after witnessing the transition of power from her mother to brother in the grand old party.

On new Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra said, “The road ahead is tough for him, but he is the man for it and he is brave enough.”

Priyanka’s assertion that Sonia Gandhi would fight the next LS election clears the air on not just her own highly speculated future in the Congress, but also the future of the outgoing Congress chief, a four-time Lok Sabha MP -– first from Amethi and then Rae Bareli.

Indications are that Sonia Gandhi will continue to be chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party. The Congress is hunting for an appropriate title for her with many leaders finding the term “patron” unfit in party tradition.

“A better term is needed. It’s being debated,” said a senior leader who added that Sonia Gandhi is seeking temporary rest to pursue passions like art restoration.

In 19 years as Congress chief, which she recalled emotionally in her farewell speech at AICC, Sonia Gandhi hasn’t had the time to meet people she would have otherwise met, or to restore art, something she learnt from National Museum experts. As salutations poured for her, Sonia Gandhi left everyone guessing about what she planned to do.

This morning, she spoke of her human failings and how her hands trembled when she was giving her first speech as Congress president in 1998.

“I was so nervous that my hands were shaking. I could not think how I would manage this historic organisation,” she said today before vacating the party chief’s post. Sonia Gandhi’s speech was a walk down memory lane as she recalled how late PM Indira Gandhi accepted her as a daughter; taught her the nuances of Indian culture; how in Indira Gandhi’s assassination, she lost “her mother”; and how seven years later, she lost her only anchor, her husband Rajiv Gandhi.

It was many years later that I could emerge from my shell. I entered politics to fulfil a duty to my family, party and country when communal forces were raising their ugly head,” Sonia Gandhi told Congress cadres, signing off with a message of hope and revival.