Rahul Gandhi To Be The Leader Of Opposition In Lok Sabha
The Congress party announced senior party leader and MP Rahul Gandhi as the Leader of the Opposition on Tuesday evening. This is the first time after 10 years the Lok Sabha will have a Leader of Opposition.
The Congress has emerged as the single largest opposition party after a gap of 10 years. The party earlier in the past two terms failed to secure the 10 percent members required to ensure the post. However, no such 10 percent rule was mentioned in the Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act.
And thus in 2014, the post was held by Congress chief Kharge in Lok Sabha and the post went to Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary in 2019 despite controversies. The decision to make Rahul Gandhi as the Leader of the Opposition was made at the meeting of floor leaders of INDIA bloc parties at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence in New Delhi.
Announcing the decision in a press briefing, party general secretary in-charge of the organization K C Venugopal said, “CPP chairperson Sonia Gandhi wrote a letter to pro-tem Speaker Bhartruhari Mahtab, informing the decision of appointment of Rahul Gandhi as the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha”.
The decision regarding the office bearers will be taken later.
Rahul Gandhi has been an MP for five terms and currently represents the Rae Bareli constituency in Lok Sabha.
Meanwhile, the appointment of the Opposition leader has come ahead of the election to the post of Speaker for which both the ruling NDA and the opposition INDIA bloc have fielded their respective candidates.
With Rahul deciding to take on the post, the Congress has decided to take on the BJP-led NDA more aggressively in the House. Rahul Gandhi has hinted that he would take up the issues including the alleged paper leaks in various examinations including NEET-UG, and Agnipath Scheme in the House.
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Being the opposition leader, he will play key roles like being part of the selection of Election Commissioners and the CBI director along with the Prime minister. This will be the Congress leader’s first constitutional post despite having been in Parliament since 2004. Rahul Gandhi became the Congress President in 2017 and later resigned after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, taking moral responsibility for the party’s poor performance during the polls. The public perception of the leader changed after the Bharat Jodo Yatra. This not only was reflected in the improvement of the party’s tally, Rahul Gandhi also won both the Rae Bareli and Wayanad Lok Sabha constituencies with a margin of over 3.5 lakh votes.
