India's Rahul Gandhi to head Congress party

Rahul Gandhi, tipped to be a future prime minister of India, is set to take over as president of the country's ruling Congress party by year's end, a report said on Saturday.

Rahul was named in August to a four-member panel to run the party's affairs while his mother Sonia Gandhi, who is currently party president, recovered from surgery for an undisclosed condition.

The Economic Times newspaper said several unnamed party leaders, including a cabinet minister, had confirmed to the daily that Rahul would take over the party's reins in "four to eight weeks."

Sonia Gandhi, who engineered the party's return to power in 2004, would restrict her role to providing broad directions to the party and government, the newspaper said.
A senior aide to Rahul told AFP he was aware of no such plans.

"Whenever the party takes such a decision it will be officially announced, but there is no such thing happening in the party," said the aide, who asked not to be identified.
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said on Friday "the young leader (Rahul) should now play a bigger role. Rahul has to come in the mainstream."

"Right now he is looking only after Youth Congress and the student wing of the party. I feel now he has to look after us all," he said.

There has been media speculation Rahul could be appointed party chief on November 19, the birthday of his late grandmother, former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Rahul would be stepping into the fray as the Congress party battles its biggest crisis since taking power in 2004, facing a string of corruption scandals and soaring inflation.
The party also faces a string of key elections next year, including one in pivotal Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.

Sonia Gandhi appointed her son to the post of party general secretary for youth affairs in 2007, a move seen as cementing his position as heir apparent.
"The whole plan of Sonia has always been that the sceptre must be handed to the son," political analyst Inder Malhotra told AFP recently.

The Gandhi dynasty, which stems from first post-independence prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and has no link to independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, has exerted huge influence in India during most of its post-independence history.
 

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