Why Have a Nomition?

The Congress is a dystic political party as everyone knows. The party has always had as its leader in Parliament someone from the Nehru-Gandhi family. Whenever it has been in power, it has had someone from the family as Prime Minister, with just two exceptions: P.V.rasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh. When one thinks of how long the Congress or a Congress-led government has been in power at the Centre, the 20 years during which  Manmohan Singh and rasimha Rao were Prime Ministers cannot be regarded a long period considering the time Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi have been at the helm. It does not look at all likely that the Congress can come back to power at the next parliamentary elections of 2019. The business of elevating the party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to party president is something that does not really call for any formalities. This was an expected development, and the party ensured that it also remained an uncontested succession. Therefore, one does not see any reason for any formalities or any waiting period (after the party’s announcement of its intentions) to induct Rahul Gandhi as the party president in place of his mother. What is rather odd and somewhat amusing is that several nomition papers should have been filed in the me of Rahul Gandhi, including one where his mother proposed his me. Having ensured that Rahul Gandhi had no other contenders for the party president’s post, just one nomition, proposed by someone other than his mother would have been both adequate and appropriate in the case of one of India’s leading political parties that now has only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha.