Young turks recall how Rahul Gandhi infused fresh blood in party

New Delhi: “A leader is a person who identifies talent and gives people an opportunity to become a mass leader,” recalled Congress Spokesperson Ragini Nayak quoting party former Chief Rahul Gandhi from a workshop session after his entrance into politics. She was refuting the claims that young turks were not being given importance and not being promoted in the party.
The remarks came amid the second high profile rebellion in the Congress by senior party leader Sachin Pilot last week against the party’s leader Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan.
Following the rebellion by Pilot, many opposition leaders joined the bandwagon to slam the former Congress chief questioning his leadership and accusing him of sidelining the Gen Next leaders in the grand old party.
Speaking to IANS, Nayak, who contested the 2013 Delhi assembly polls unsuccessfully said, “When Rahul Gandhi joined the party he became the in-charge of the frontal organisations. At that time I was the national General Secretary of NSUI. During a workshop he asked the NSUI activists who is a leader, to which many said that a leader is a person who has followers, while someone said that a leader is one who does something new. To this Rahul Gandhi said all this is right, but essentially a leader is a person who gives opportunities to others to become a mass leader,” she said.
The Congress leader said that he came into politics with a vision to identify and promote the capabilities of young leaders. “The entire allegation that he did not allowed the young leaders to grow in the party is completely baseless,” Nayak said.
Pointing at the Cabinet of the Congress-led UPA government she said, “In the UPA Cabinet, Rahul Gandhi did not take any post, while Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, Milind Deora all were there. If he was against promoting the young turks, then he should not have allowed any one of them to be a Minister in the UPA government,” she said, adding that she was also given a chance twice to contest the DUSU elections despite the fact that she lost her first election.