As Congress debates leadership beyond Gandhis, recalling Narasimha Rao’s 1992 organisational polls

As senior Congress leaders at a meeting on Monday discussed who should lead the party, it is time for India’s largest opposition outfit puts its house in order. The ailing Sonia Gandhi cannot continue as president for long. Reluctant Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, tainted by the allegations levelled against her husband Robert Vadra, cannot be natural choices for the position five members of their family have held over 101 years.

By the evening, the Congress Working Committee meeting ended with participants asking Sonia Gandhi to remain interim party president. However, in order to revamp the organisation, the Congress must not nominate anyone to the position. Instead, it should look back at its recent history under PV Narasimha Rao and hold an internal election to choose their leader.

It is true that former Prime Minister of India and Congress president Rao was tainted in many ways while running a minority government at the Centre between 1991 and 1996. The relationship between Sonia Gandhi and Narasimha Rao became so sour that after his death in 2004, the former prime minister’s body was not allowed to lie in state in the Congress headquarters. His last rites had to be performed not in New...

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