Senior Congress leader denies rift over Rahul’s PM nomination

While young leaders in the Congress party made quite a show of supporting Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's nomination as their party's prime ministerial candidate, the party's old guard seems to be holding its cards close to its chest.

Expectedly, Gandhi's first one-on-one interview to a Hindi daily on Tuesday has sent the media and political circles into tizzy with speculation reaching fever pitch over his imminent nomination as the party's PM candidate.

His statement that he is ready for any role that the party will assign to him has been widely interpreted as his nod to being declared as the PM nominee of the Congress party in the run to Lok Sabha 2014.

Prominent young leaders in the Congress party such as Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari and Rajasthan Congress President Sachin Pilot have gone all out to support the prospect of Gandhi's elevation as the party's prime ministerial candidate.

Time for a higher posting? PTI

Pilot was quoted by the media as saying that he believed that Gandhi was "someone who can lead the party's charge. It will unify the party across all parts of the nation."

Tewari went one step further telling reporters that Gandhi was their "natural leader" and that "we would want that we contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections under his leadership."

The Congress old guard, however, doesn't seem to be openly gushing at such a prospect just yet. The only leader to have expressed apprehensions over projecting Gandhi as the Congress PM candidate is AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh.

Responding to speculation about Gandhi being named as PM nominee, Singh had said, "I have been consistently saying that we are a parliamentary democracy and here it is not a contest between key personalities. It's a contest between policies, ideologies and programmes of parties…debate about Rahul Gandhi versus Narendra Modi, Modi versus Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul versus Modi versus Kejriwal is to do with TRP readings of the electronic media."

Party leaders, however, maintain that there is no divide within the party between young and senior leaders on the issue of making Gandhi the PM nominee.

A senior leader of the party said, "Everybody's demand is that he should be elevated or that he should be nominated as the prime ministerial candidate. There is no divide between the young and old leaders in the party. Everyone wants him to be elevated. But it all depends on him. It is his decision."

Characterising Digvijaya Singh's statement as a 'personal opinion', the senior leader said, "There may be leaders in the party who may have personal opinions about projecting a PM candidate at this stage. This has to do with the prevailing perception in the media regarding the Congress party. The well-wishers of Rahul Gandhi are of the opinion that he should not be projected at this stage."

Downplaying Gandhi's response to the national daily to the question on whether he would accept nomination as PM candidate of the party, the leader said, "He hasn't said he is ready for prime ministership. He said whatever role is given to him by the party he will perform to the best of his abilities. This is a generic statement, everybody will say this. It is a not a specific statement."