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Rahul Gandhi’s leadership lacks consistency, says NCP chief Sharad Pawar
In an interview with Marathi newspaper Lokmat’s YouTube channel, Pawar maintained Congress is the only alternative to the ruling BJP
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has said Rahul Gandhi’s leadership has a “few problems” and lacks consistency even though he is likely to be reappointed as his party’s next president since Congress leaders and workers still have faith in the Nehru-Gandhi family’s leadership. In an interview with Marathi newspaper Lokmat’s YouTube channel, Pawar maintained Congress is the only alternative to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Among Congress leaders, the Gandhi-Nehru family still has high respect and they would want Rahul to lead the party. The acceptability of the leadership by others within the party is important. I would not like to talk about the internal affairs of any other party,” said Pawar. He criticised the BJP over its policies while calling on the Congress to bring like-minded parties together to build up a strong alternative to the ruling party at the Centre.
Pawar quit the Congress in 1999 to form the NCP. The NCP has since been the Congress’s key ally since and the two parties have shared power in Maharashtra and at the Centre. The two parties are currently part of the Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government.
Pawar said former US President Barack Obama has no business commenting upon the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, who stepped down as the Congress chief after the party dismal performance in the 2019 national elections. “I think Obama should have avoided such remarks. Any political leader should restrain from any comments about the leadership of other countries and the political outfits as a matter of political decency. Canada has issued a statement about the farmers’ protest in India and our central government has rightly given a reply to it.”
In his memoir A Promised Land, Obama wrote Rahul Gandhi has “a nervous, unformed quality about him as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject”, according to a review in the New York Times.
Pawar said it is high time for big parties like Congress to take the lead to bring other parties together to build an alternative to the BJP. “There are many parties that do not stand with the BJP’s policies and have been openly speaking against them. West Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee has been taking the BJP head-on consistently. In such a scenario, Congress and the Left parties should come forward and join hands with leaders like Mamta by keeping the differences aside.”
He said it could not happen because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “But I think it can happen during the forthcoming parliament session [in February].”
Pawar said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government does not believe in dialogue with the opposition parties. “Except for the meetings on Covid-19 pandemic, the central government never attempted to have a dialogue with other parties. This has never happened in history,” he said. Pawar said the Modi government should have had an effective dialogue with the agitating farmers on the contentious issues related to the farm laws passed in September.
