Amid the raging debate within the party on who should don the cap of leader of Opposition in the lok Sabha after the Congress rout in the recent General Elections, majority of the 44 elected MPs seem to favour the idea of Congress president Sonia Gandhi leading the challenge against the NDA Government.
AICC sources said that with party divided on choice of any leader to take up the onerous task, senior leaders have started persuading Sonia to step in to lead the party’s charge in the lower House.At the same time, since the Congress does not have requisite strength of 55 MPs for naming leader of Opposition, the party is also in touch with the BJP leadership to make them agree on Sonia’s name.Party insiders said they are keeping their fingers crossed on the BJP’s response since the status of the leader of Opposition would come with the perks and status of a Cabinet Minister.
The BJP, which agreed to nominate senior Congress MP Kamal Nath as Pro-tem Speaker of the 16th lok Sabha, may be amenable to agree on his name as the leader of Opposition too, since he enjoyed a good rapport with the previous Opposition party when he served as the Parliamentary Affairs Minister.Earlier, there were indications that Nath, who is the senior most MP in the lok Sabha, could be made leader of Opposition. The name of former Union Minister M Veerapa Moily was also doing the rounds with his supporters stressing the fact that Karnataka gave maximum number of seats to the Congress this time around.
A senior Congress leader maintained that after the humiliating drubbing, the party should not send confusing signals to workers and the voters by ignoring the high command in electing the leader of Opposition. While a number of them want Sonia Gandhi to take over as the leader of Opposition, some of them want Rahul Gandhi to take up the responsibilities on the ground that he was the face of the party in the poll campaign.
“He should not shy away from taking responsibility in difficult times for the party,” said a very top senior leader.“We should not repeat the dual leadership practice this time. If due to any circumstance, Sonia does not take it up, Rahul is the second best choice. Any third person being made the loP will reinforce the message that Rahul is not keen on taking responsibility,” he said.
Asked if assigning this responsibility to Sonia will not put a question mark on future leadership of Rahul in the party, the leader pointed out that Sonia was the party president but the Prime Ministership went to Manmohan Singh.Sonia has been unanimously elected the leader of Congress Parliamentary Party, which is authorised to elect leader of Oppositions in the lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.Former Defence Minister AK Antony is likely to lead the Opposition bench in the Rajya Sabha after Deputy leader of House in the Manmohan Singh regime, Dr Karan Singh turned down Sonia’s offer to lead the Opposition in the Upper House.
Other senior leaders in the Rajya Sabha who were in the race were Ghulam Nabi Azad, Janardhan Dwivedi, Digvijay Singh and Jairam Ramesh.