- Sunday, November 24, 2024
The 77-year-old ailing Italian-born veteran has chosen to become a member of the indirectly elected upper chamber of the Indian parliament.
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Indian opposition preparing to challenge prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in this year’s general elections has seen another setback as Sonia Gandhi, one of the most prominent opposition leaders, decided to withdraw from electoral politics on grounds of age and health.
The 77-year-old has said this in a letter she wrote to her constituency Rae Bareli in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most crucial state politically since it sends the most number of parliamentarians (80) to the elected lower chamber of the parliament — the Lok Sabha.
The Italian-born leader of the Indian National Congress, the country’s main opposition party, however, is not quitting politics and will now aim to become a member of the indirectly elected upper chamber of the parliament — the Rajya Sabha. She filed her nomination for the same earlier this week.
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Sonia, in fact, was the only candidate from her party to win a seat in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 general elections. The state was swept by the BJP and its ally Apna Dal (Soneylal).
The veteran leader, who has been the Congress’s longest-serving president (1998-2017, 2019-22), was an MP from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh between 1999 and 2004. Since then, she has been winning Rae Bareli despite a BJP wave in the state.
The widow to former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and daughter-in-law to Indira Gandhi, another former prime minister, Sonia Gandhi also had an opportunity to become the prime minister in 2004 but refused. She instead chose Manmohan Singh to hold the top office.
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“Given my health and increasing age, I will not be contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha elections,” Gandhi wrote on Wednesday (14), thanking the people of Rae Bareli.
While members of the Lok Sabha are elected directly by voters, those of the Rajya Sabha are elected by legislators from different states of India.
It has been reported that Sonia’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra might contest from the Lok Sabha seat she is vacating. The 51-year-old has never been an elected official although she has worked for the Congress’s organisation, including in Uttar Pradesh.
The other Gandhi in the Lok Sabha is Rahul Gandhi, Sonia’s son who is currently marching across India to mobilise public opinion in his party’s favour.
Last year, the Congress and other political parties formed the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, called INDIA in short, to challenge Modi and the BJP in the upcoming election. But lack of consensus among the constituent parties has made the alliance look unstable.
