New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s push for adherence to the ‘one person, one post’ norm, arrived at in the party’s Udaipur camp earlier this year, has led to speculation as to whether Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot is out of contention for the Congress president’s post.
The party will have its much awaited polls soon. Gehlot was considered to be a prime candidate to contest the internal election and had reportedly made it clear that he would throw his name in the hat only if Rahul Gandhi did not run for the post.
At a Congress legislature party meeting at his residence on the night of September 20, Gehlot reportedly told the party’s Rajasthan MLAs that they would be required to travel to New Delhi if the chief minister decides to file his nomination, news agency PTI quoted state food and civil supplies minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas as saying.
Khachariyawas also said that Gehlot will first travel to Kochi to convince Rahul Gandhi to contest the election for the post of the party’s next national president.
Responding to queries during a press conference held between the first and second leg of the day’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, Gandhi said the Congress president was not just an organisational position, it is an ideological post and a belief system.
“What we decided at Udaipur, we expect that commitment to be maintained,” Gandhi said on being asked whether he would stand by the party’s Udaipur ‘Chintan Shivir’ resolution to only have one person in a post.
Gandhi, also the MP from Wayanad, said he would advise whosoever becomes the president of the party that they should remember that the post represents a set of ideas, a belief system and a vision of India.
Another piece of advice he had for the contestants in the party’s presidential polls was that “you are taking a historic position. A position that defines and has defined a particular view of India.”
On the nation-wide raids on the offices and other premises of the Popular Front of India, Gandhi said that “all forms of communalism regardless where they come from should be combated.”
“There should be zero tolerance towards communalism and it should be combated,” he added.