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[1]EW DELHI : After an unexplained sabbatical lasting nearly two months, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi returned to Delhi on Thursday morning.He has returned at a time when the Congress is preparing for mega rally against the Narendra Modi government’s Land Acquisition Ordinance on April 19. During Mr. Gandhi’s 56-day absence, the agitation around the Land Bill has become a major platform for the Opposition to unite against the NDA government.
The Congress has taken the lead in these efforts under the leadership of party president Sonia Gandhi, prompting many within the party to question Mr. Gandhi’s suitability to take over as the Congress president.After senior Congress leader Captain Amarinder Singh in an exclusive interview to The Hindu said Ms. Gandhi should continue to lead the party, several other leaders have echoed the same view.
Highly placed sources in the Congress told The Hindu that Mr. Gandhi would spend the next two days consulting various farmers’ groups and preparing his speech for the rally on April 19. Despite the questions being raised over Mr. Gandhi in some quarters, these sources confirmed that the party will go ahead with its plan of elevating him to the post of party president later this year.
The 44-year-old Congress leader arrived at 11.15 a.m. on a Thai Airways plane from Bangkok and went straight to his residence where his mother and sister Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra were waiting.Speculation over where Mr. Gandhi spent his sabbatical had peaked during the Parliament session and the weeks that followed.Sources confirmed that over the last four weeks he was at a vipassana meditation camp in Myanmar. Before that he was travelling to different places.(The Hindu)
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