Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi statement suggests willingness to accept PM nomination

New Delhi – Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has said that he is willing to accept any responsibility conferred upon him by his party. His remarks were made to Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar. (Read the Dainik Bhaskar interview here)

On Friday, the Congress is holding a huge meeting in Delhi amid feverish speculation that Mr Gandhi, 43, will be announced at the session as his party’s prime ministerial candidate.

Recently, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear that even if the Congress defies expectations and is re-elected for a third consecutive term, he will not return to office. Dr Singh also described Mr Gandhi as the best candidate for the country’s top job.

Mr Gandhi, 43, is No 2 in the Congress; his mother, Sonia, is party president. Mr Gandhi clarified that his sister, Priyanka, will play a large role in managing the upcoming campaign for the constituencies that his mother and he represent, but appeared to reject reports that she will run for Parliament. “Priyanka is my sister, friend, and a staunch Congress worker. It is in this capacity that she’s helping me. More than this, I’m not expecting her to play any specific role in elections,” Mr Gandhi said.

Though Mr Gandhi headlined the Congress campaign for the recent state elections in Delhi and other states, the party placed poorly. In Delhi, where it had governed for 15 years, it was reduced to third position, trounced by the new Aam Aadmi Party or AAP, which is headed by Arvind Kejriwal and has positioned itself as an anti-corruption organization.

“The Aam Aadmi Party works in a different way, but I must concede  that AAP has done some of the work that the Congress wished to do in Delhi,” Mr Gandhi conceded in his interview to Dainik Bhaskar.