Sir — Bringing his nearly two month-long mysterious ‘soul-searching sabbatical’ to an end, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has returned amid hopes in his tottering party that the ‘mentally re-energised’ leader will take his party ahead with greater vigour and skill, and that he will acquire the acumen and the capacity to re-invigorate and re-invent the 129-year old Congress that has been gripped by an existential crisis.
Mr Gandhi has indeed managed to keep a lid on his whereabouts in this era of 24×7 news. Even social media could get only fleeting glimpses of his arrival. Now, all the issues that are pending have to be decided by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the party vice president. It is for Mr Gandhi to decide as to whether he wants to be president or not.
But one thing is certain: In the period of his absence, Ms Gandhi has shown that she can galvanise political forces against the Narendra Modi Government. She led the march to Rashtrapati Bhavan against the land acquisition Ordinance, and also rallied around former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when the Coalgate case cropped up. Now, irrespective of the post that Mr Rahul Gandhi holds or will hold, he will have to match his mother’s acumen.