Veteran Congress leader and former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar in a recent interview made some big claims about the opposition INDIA bloc, especially the Congress party and the Gandhi family.
Aiyar said that he is of the opinion that the grand old party should be ready to not be the leader of the INDIA bloc. The veteran Congressman added that Mamata Banerjee and others have the competence to lead the alliance.
"I think the Congress should be ready to not be the leader of the bloc. Let whoever wants to be the leader be the leader. There is competence in Mamata Banerjee… There is competence in others in the alliance," Aiyar told The Indian Express in an interview.
Even though Aiyar isn't positive on the grand old party leading the alliance, he didn't write it off entirely either. He further explained that Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi will be treated with more respect than he would as the president of the INDIA bloc.
"So, 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. It doesn't have to be the only one. It will be the major one in the INDIA bloc. I am sure Rahul will be treated with even more respect than he would be as the president of the alliance."
Furthermore, Aiyar also delved into how the Congress landed into its present state. He talked at length about the Uma Shankar Dikshit panel report commissioned by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi around 1990.
Aiyar said that the report spoke of the democratisation of the party and holding elections at every level. The report also spoke of selecting and training people in Congress' ideology at every level and informed about the Congress' policy.
He, however, was not hopeful of the party reforming itself and said that the only tangible solution right now seems to be alliances. "After all, the first UPA government was formed when the Congress only had 140 seats. But because we had a leader in Sonia Gandhi who was like a magnet attracting the iron shavings."
Mani Shankar Aiyar said that it is important to do this in a bigger scale and in a more efficient way than the haphazard manner in the 2024 Lok Sabha wherein the INDIA bloc were only 10 seats less than the BJP.
"If the INDIA bloc had been more carefully and for longer cultivated and its internal integrity strengthened then even in 2024 Narendra Modi would have been history. Now he hasn't become history."