Sonia stalls push for Rahul\\\'s PM candidacy

NEW DELHI, Jan 17 (AFP): Indian political matriarch Sonia Gandhi Friday refused to bow to her struggling party's pleas to nominate her son as its prime ministerial candidate in upcoming elections, which she called a battle to save the Hindu-majority nation's secular identity.
A day after she silenced a growing clamour within the Congress party to declare Rahul Gandhi as its choice for premier at the polls due in May, the Italian-born Sonia told followers there was no going back on the decision.
"We took a decision on Rahul yesterday and that decision is final," Sonia told delegates at a party conclave in New Delhi as newspapers reported that only a minority of Congress leaders had backed her decision.
After a decade in power, Congress is lagging well behind the Hindu-nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in opinion polls, with voters turned off by an economic slowdown and a string of corruption scandals.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is retiring after two terms, and the party had been expected to nominate the 43-year-old Rahul as its choice for premier at the conclave.
But the prospects were dashed when Sonia Gandhi, the powerful party president and senior-most figure in the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, opposed the move at a meeting on Thursday night.
Rahul, who is also due to address Friday's gathering, remains the party's chief election strategist.
Analysts have said the BJP's decision to project the divisive Narendra Modi as its choice for premier could limit its room for manoeuvre in post-election coalition negotiations-a trap that Sonia Gandhi was keen to avoid.
There has also been press speculation that Congress's expected defeat will be so comprehensive that the Gandhi family does not want to kill off Rahul's nascent political career.
But the family's star power remains high and many in the party see Rahul as their best hope, despite his aversion to the media spotlight and his well-documented reservations about following in the prime ministerial footsteps of his father, grandmother and great-grandfather.
"All the members of the CWC (Congress Working Committee) wanted him to be announced as the PM candidate but the Congress president intervened," Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi told reporters.
"She said: 'This is not the party's tradition (to announce its PM candidate before elections). Just because some party has declared the PM candidate, does not mean that Congress will do the same.'"