AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi gets the support of senior Congress leader and HRD Minister Arjun Singh for projection as the party's prime ministerial candidate in the next general elections. Chetan Chauhan reports.
AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi got the support of senior Congress leader and HRD Minister Arjun Singh for projection as the party's prime ministerial candidate in the next general elections.
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Singh said on Monday that he found no problem in the Congress projecting Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate, adding that the young leader has all qualities of his late father. Singh clarified that he was only giving the reasons for Gandhi being a prime ministerial candidate and was not saying that he should be projected. "Why not?" was his reply when asked whether Gandhi should be projected as the Congress's prime ministerial candidate.
"He (Rahul) has all the qualities of his father. He is making sincere efforts in acquiring the information and knowledge that is required," the HRD Minister said.
Singh, however, refused to get drawn into a controversy over who the Congress should project as prime ministerial candidate when asked to react to NCP chief Sharad Pawar's comment that Manmohan Singh should be the UPA's next prime ministerial candidate. "These are individual views. It is for the UPA to decide. The party's view would be mine," he said.
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Singh avoided answering questions related to the Congress's plans for next Lok Sabha elections. "I am not the competent person to answer these questions," he said when asked about Pawar's suggestion that the UPA should contest the polls jointly.
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Singh avoided answering questions related to the Congress's plans for next Lok Sabha elections. "I am not the competent person to answer these questions," he said when asked about Pawar's suggestion that the UPA should contest the polls jointly.
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On the increasing inflation, Singh said it would have an impact on coming elections but insisted that the government was taking steps to control the price rise. Some steps have been taken and the results would be visible in the coming days, he said, adding that the procurement of rice and wheat would start soon and lead to an increase in the stocks and that there would be no scarcity. The price rise would be a thing of the past by the time the country goes to the polls, Singh said.
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On the 27 per cent quota for OBCs, Singh said the UPA coordination committee would meet after the reconvening of Parliament on April 15 to sort out differences on the creamy layer issue.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
