Sonia refuses to back down on rejecting Rahul for PM
Congress party head's decision seen as attempt to protect her son's nascent political career
Indian political matriarch Sonia Gandhi yesterday refused to bow to her struggling party's pleas to nominate her son as its prime ministerial candidate in upcoming elections, which she called a battle to save the country's secular identity.
A day after she rejected a clamour within the Congress party to declare Rahul Gandhi as its choice for premier at polls due in May, the Italian-born Sonia told followers there was no going back on the decision.
"We took a decision on Rahul yesterday and that decision is final," she said in a speech that was interrupted several times with shouts of "Rahul for PM!"
"We meet today to signal that Congress is ready and prepared for the battle ahead," she told a party conclave in New Delhi. "It will be a battle between competing ideologies, conflicting views of the history and a different vision for the future ... it will be a battle for India."
Congress announced late on Thursday that the party will not formally declare Gandhi as its candidate for prime minister — a bit of political manoeuvering aimed at protecting the 43-year-old from being a scapegoat for his party's problems.
After a decade in power, Congress is lagging well behind the Hindu-nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in opinion polls, with voters turned off by an economic slowdown and a string of corruption scandals.