Rahul Gandhi (born 19 June 1970) is the Vice President of the Indian National Congress and the Chairperson of the Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India. Gandhi has served as an General Secretary in the All India Congress Committee and represents Amethi as its Member of Parliament (MP). He is the second-ranked member of the Congress Working Committee.
Gandhi comes from a politically influential family. His parents, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, have served as the Prime Minister of India and the President of the Congress respectively. He grew up in New Delhi, where his grandmother Indira Gandhi, was serving as Prime Minister until her assassination in 1984. His father was likewise assassinated in 1991. Due to security concerns, Gandhi constantly had to shift schools in his youth. He studied abroad under a pseudonym, his identity being known only to a select few including university officials and security agencies.
After obtaining degrees in international relations and philosophy at the universities of Rollins and Cambridge, Gandhi worked at the Monitor Group, a management consulting firm in London, before establishing the Mumbai–based technology outsourcing firm, Backops Services Private Ltd. In 2004, Gandhi re-entered public life; he ran for and won his father's old seat of Amethi in India's national legislature. A few years later, in 2007, Gandhi was elected as an general secretary of the Congress party, a previously executive post held by his father, and by his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru. Described as a youth icon, Gandhi is the leader of the Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India. Amidst calls from Congress party veterans for his greater involvement in party politics and national government, Gandhi was elected Congress Vice President in 2013.
Political career :
In March 2004, Rahul Gandhi announced his entry into politics by announcing that he would contest the May 2004 elections, standing for his father's former constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament. The seat had been held by his mother until she transferred to the neighbouring seat of Rae Bareilly. The Congress had been doing poorly in Uttar Pradesh, holding only 10 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state at the time. At the time, this move generated surprise among political commentators, who had regarded his sister Priyanka as being the more charismatic and likely to succeed. It generated speculation that the presence of a young member of India's most famous political family would reinvigorate the Congress party's political fortunes among India's youthful population In his first interview with foreign media, Rahul Gandhi portrayed himself as a uniter of the country and condemned "divisive" politics in India, saying that he would try to reduce caste and religious tensions.
Rahul Gandhi won with a landslide majority, retaining the family stronghold with a margin of over 100,000 as the Congress unexpectedly defeated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Until 2006 he held no other office.
Rahul Gandhi and his sister, who is married to Robert Vadra, managed their mother's campaign for re-election to Rae Bareilly in 2006, which was won easily with a margin greater than 400,000 votes. He was a prominent figure in the Congress campaign for the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections; Congress, however, won only 22 seats with 8.53% of votes.
Rahul Gandhi was appointed a general secretary of the All India Congress Committee on 24 September 2007 in a reshuffle of the party secretariat. In the same reshuffle, he was also given charge of the Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India. In 2008, senior Congress leader Veerappa Moily mentioned “Rahul-as-PM” idea when the PM of India Manmohan Singh was still abroad.
In July 2012, Union Law Minister, Salman Khurshid stated that Rahul Gandhi should provide a "new ideology" to meet the present day challenges, the Congress party was facing.
On 19 January 2013, in a party conclave of AICC, Rahul Gandhi formally took charge of Congress Vice President. He was elevated to the post of Vice President at the party's Jaipur conclave. As vice-president, he is second only to party President and his mother Sonia Gandhi.
In September 2007 when he was appointed general secretary in charge of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), Rahul Gandhi promised to reform youth politics. In his attempt to prove himself thus, in November 2008 Rahul Gandhi held interviews at his 12, Tughlak Lane residence in New Delhi to handpick at least 40 people who will make up the think-tank of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), an organisation that he has been keen to transform since he was appointed general secretary in September 2007.
Under Rahul Gandhi, IYC and NSUI has seen a dramatic increase in members from a two lakhs to twenty five lakhs. The Indian Express wrote in 2011, "Three years later, as another organisational reshuffle is in the offing, Rahul’s dream remains unrealised with party veterans manipulating internal elections in the Youth Congress and a host of people with questionable background gaining entry into it."
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