Congress should be ready to not lead INDIA bloc: Mani Shankar Aiyar

Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar believes his party should be ready to not be the leader of the INDIA bloc.

The former Union minister, who has just had the second volume of his autobiography, A Maverick in Politics, published, told The Indian Express in an interview that other leaders, including TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, are competent enough to lead the bloc.

Of late, Mamata has made her willingness to lead the Opposition alliance clear, with many other leaders, including the veteran RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, backing her claim.

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Congress would still lead

However, Aiyar added that the Congress would still play the major part in the alliance.

“…I don’t care who becomes the leader because I think the position of the Congress party and of the Congress leader will always be a major one,” Aiyar told The Indian Express.

He said Rahul Gandhi, the current leader of the alliance, would then be “treated with even more respect” than before.

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Without Gandhi family, Congress would split

He stressed that despite talks about the need for the Gandhi family to step down and let other lead the Congress, it continues to be the adhesive for the party.

The Congress believes they wouldn’t have got even 44 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls had the Gandhi family not been leading them, he claimed in the interview. “They would have got four seats. Similarly, for the Lok Sabha elections this year, they wouldn’t have got 99 seats. Because the party would have split,” he told The Indian Express.

He reminded people of Rahul’s resignation in 2019 and his assertion that no member of his family would succeed him. “For three months, the party tried to find a leader,” he pointed out.

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Rahul not a liability for Congress

“The Gandhis are where they are because the Congress wants them there…. The party doesn’t believe that Rahul Gandhi is a liability. He is looked upon as an asset, and the BJP knows this. Whatever his deficiencies — speech, articulation — they keep on attacking him because he is the symbol of the Congress and they keep on attacking Nehru and Gandhis,” Aiyar said during the interview.

He added that if the Gandhi family vanishes from the scene, there would be so much faction fighting that the party would disintegrate.

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Rahul-Priyanka duumvirate will rule Congress

He also dismissed the belief that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra would be a better leader than Rahul. He sees the siblings as a duumvirate that will be the “face of the Congress for the next 30 years”.

He added that it has been decided that Rahul will be the face of the family, but Priyanka will be a major contributor. “Any attempt to separate them is bound to fail,” he noted, adding that in future, the Congress will be of Rahul and Priyanka.