With media hype in mind, Congress to reveal info on Rahul’s elevation in steps

New Delhi  : 47-year old Rahul Gandhi’s elevation as the Congress President is a foregone conclusion as the nominations ended at 3 pm on Monday with nobody else entering the fray, but he will not be declared elected any time soon.

The party has adopted a strategy to grab media attention on Rahul for another eight days to take advantage in the Gujarat Assembly elections.

It became apparent when the state leaders were personally told by Rahul not to stay back in Delhi for celebrations of his election but go home and get back only on December 11.

The strategy of Rahul remaining in headlines on TV and newspapers became crystal clear when Congress central election authority chairman Mullapally Ramchandran, flanked by its two members, Madhusudan Mistry and Bhubaneswar Kalita, refused to declare Rahul elected unopposed at a press conference after close of the nominations.

He even refused to say whether all nominations have been filed only for Rahul as he said this would be clear only after the nomination papers are taken up for the scrutiny on Tuesday. All that he can state now is that a total of 89 nomination papers have been received, he said.

Rahul is not staying put in Delhi for any announcement after the scrutiny as he flies off on a 3-day Gujarat tour to campaign for the first phase of polling on Saturday.

As part of the strategy, the election authority will just declare how many nomination papers were found in order and so valid and then wait for December 11, the last date for withdrawals.

If there is no second candidate, one should be declared elected as unopposed, but the authority has an absurd plan to wait till the last date of withdrawals.

So, Monday’s drama of nominations kept Rahul on the TV screens for most of the day giving the Congress advantage in the first phase of Gujarat polls while declaring him elected only on December 11 is aimed at grabbing more TV coverage that benefits in the second phase of polls on December 14.