Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s whereabouts continued to arouse curiosity and trigger speculation on Wednesday with a party leader Jagdish Sharma claiming that the Gandhi scion was in Uttarakhand. However, Rahul’s office and the Congress promptly denied his claims saying the pictures were old ones taken during his visit to the State in 2008.
There is speculation in the media and political circles that the young leader is holidaying abroad at a time when the Parliament is in session and when the Congress is taking the NDA Government on over the land Acquisition Bill, with its leaders staging a big agitation at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday against the issue.
Not one to let such an opportunity go by, even the social media is abuzz with the news and the twitterati are having a ball taking swipes at the young leader for the timing of his decision and guessing his whereabouts.
A tweet @sardesairajdeep says: Why is Rahul Gandhi’s ‘leave of absence’ timed for the start of the budget sessionIJ You don’t take leave when school starts surely.” Another @madversity says: Rahul Gandhi is taking leave from Congress party. This is not what we want to do during annual appraisal time.”
Yet another making a guess about his holiday destination tweets “#RahulGandhi is on Pataya beach right now waiting for the next Gandhi wave #GauravPradhan”.
Meanwhile, Sharma, who claims to be a Gandhi family loyalist, circulated pictures of Rahul vacationing in Uttarakhand in order to substantiate claims that the leader was present in the country and refute media reports that he was in Bangkok. Sharma said that he decided to speak out on the issue since there were people maligning Rahul’s image by “sending him off to Bangkok, a place known for a different kind of tourism.”
However, Congress spokesman PC Chacko dismissed Sharma’s claims, saying whatever he had stated about Rahul was “not correct”. He said Sharma was neither in the party nor did he have anything to do with it or the Gandhi family.
With several theories doing the rounds in political circles about Rahul’s holiday destination, an embarrassed Congress which “officially” has no clue of its party vice-president’s whereabouts, had to cancel the daily media briefings on Wednesday.
Adding grist to rumour mills, party president Sonia Gandhi too has declined to comment on media speculation that Rahul was sulking over not having the last word on a range of organisational issues. The party has maintained that Rahul has gone on leave for a few weeks in order to reflect on the string of electoral defeats suffered by the party, including in Delhi.
He was to lead the farmers’ agitation on Wednesday but remained incommunicado, much to the disappointment of party workers who were banking on a mega resurrection of the grand old party, by protesting against the NDA’s land legislation. The UPA-II Government in 2013 had brought the land law pushed by Rahul.
Ever since Rahul went on a sabbatical, party spokesmen have been defending him during AICC briefings with Randeep Surjewala saying he was on leave for two weeks and would resume party activities soon. On his part, Abhishek Manu Singhvi condemned all kinds of speculations.
Defending her VP’s decision to take a break, senior party leader Ambika Soni said that Rahul wanted to take some time off before the Delhi election to introspect and contemplate. Congress leader Digvijay Singh has, however, questioned the “timing” of Rahul’s sabbatical. But Singh defended his decision to take time out to reflect in the wake of a series of electoral debacles.
“What was told to all of us was that he had felt this need constantly to take a few days’ off to contemplate and to introspect. If he had gone as he wanted to, before the Delhi election, then you would’ve said ‘See, Congress is losing.
He didn’t want to face the field so he’s gone off’,” said Soni, also a Rajya Sabha member. On a day when her party colleagues were leading farmers’ agitation, Soni mentioned that before his departure Rahul had organised the rally held by the Congress against the new land acquisition rules.