Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi (19-06-1970)

Rahul Gandhi born on 19th June 1970 is an Indian politician and member of the Parliament of India, representing the Amethi constituency.His political party is the Indian National Congress.He belongs to the Nehru-Gandhi family, the most prominent political family in India. In 2009 He turned down a cabinet post in the Manmohan Singh government.

Rahul Gandhi was born in New Delhi, the first amongst 2 children of Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India and Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, the current Congress President. He is the elder brother of Priyanka Gandhi. His grandmother was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. His Maternal great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first Prime Minister of India, and his maternal great-great-grandfather Motilal Nehru was a distinguished leader of the Indian independence movement.

He attended Modern School, New Delhi before entering The Doon School,also his father's alma mater, from 1981-83 before being home-schooled for security reasons.Starting university at Harvard, from where he dropped out he eventually got his B.A. from Rollins College, Florida in 1994. He received an MPhil in Development Studies in 1995 from Trinity College, Cambridge. Rahul's mother, Sonia, is a practicing Roman Catholic. In 2004, he was reported to have been dating Veronica, an architect from Spain. The two met while at university. It is not known whether he is still in that relationship.

Corporate career

Rahul Gandhi, after graduating worked with management guru, Michael Porter's Management consulting firm, Monitor Group. for three years. His colleagues at the firm had no idea who they were working with— as he was using an assumed name. He returned to India in late 2002 to run an engineering and technology outsourcing firm in Mumbai.

Political career

In 2003, there was widespread media speculation about Rahul Gandhi's imminent entry into national politics, which he did not confirm.He appeared with his mother at public events and Congress meetings.He also traveled to Pakistan on a goodwill visit to watch the first cricket series between the countries in 14 years in a One Day International with his sister Priyanka Gandhi.

Speculation heightened in January 2004 about his and his sister's possible entry into politics when they visited their father's former constituency of Amethi, which their mother held at the time. He refused to give a definitive response, stating "I am not averse to politics. I have not decided when I will enter politics and indeed, if I ever will."

In March 2004, he announced his entry into politics by announcing that he would contest the May 2004 elections, standing for his father's former constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament.Before that, his uncle Sanjay held the seat before a plane crash. The seat had been held by his mother until she transferred to the neighbouring seat of Rae Bareilly. The Congress had been doing poorly in Uttar Pradesh, holding only 10 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state at the time. At the time, this move generated surprise among political commentators, who had regarded his sister Priyanka as being the more charismatic and likely to succeed. Party officials did not have a curriculum vitae ready for the media, such was the surprise of his move. It generated speculation that the presence of a young member of India's most famous political family would reinvigorate the Congress party's political fortunes among India's youthful population.In his first interview with foreign media, he portrayed himself as a uniter of the country and condemned "divisive" politics in India, saying that he would try to reduce caste and religious tensions.His candidacy was greeted with excitement by locals, who had a long standing affinity with the family's presence in the area.Politician of Indian National Congress He won with a landslide majority, retaining the family stronghold with a margin of over 100,000 as the Congress unexpectedly defeated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.His campaign was directed by his younger sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.[citation needed] Till 2006 he held no other office and concentrated mainly on constituency issues and the politics of Uttar Pradesh, and it was widely speculated in the Indian and international press that Sonia Gandhi is trying to groom him for a chance to become a national-level Congress leader in the future.

In January 2006, at a convention of the Indian National Congress in Hyderabad, thousands of party members asked for Gandhi to take a more prominent leadership role in the party and demanded that he address the delegates. He said "I appreciate and I am grateful for your feelings and support. I assure you I will not let you down", but asked for patience and declined to immediately seek a higher profile role.

Gandhi and his sister (married to Robert Vadra) managed their mother's campaign for reelection to Rae Bareilly in 2006, which was won easily with a margin greater than 400,000 votes.

He was a prominent figure in a high profile Congress campaign for the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections; Congress, however, won only 22 seats with 8.53% of votes. The election saw the Bahujan Samaj Party, which represents low caste Indians, to become the first party to govern in its own right in Uttar Pradesh for 16 years.

Rahul Gandhi was appointed a general secretary of the All India Congress Committee on 24 September 2007 in a reshuffle of the party secretariat.In the same reshuffle, he was also given charge of the Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India.

In his attempt to prove himself as a youth leader in November 2008 he held interviews at his 12, Tughlak Lane residence in New Delhi to handpick at least 40 people who will make up the think-tank of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), an organisation that he has been keen to transform since he was appointed general secretary in September 2007.

Rahul Gandhi participated in an interactive session with students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. The Universtity student unions have been traditionally dominated by the Left. His party, INC, however, was quick to play up Rahul's visit to JNU as an “excellent example of youth participation in politics”. Rahul's grandmother, Indira Gandhi had to face huge opposition from Left student unions during her visit to the university campus in 1982 because of her decision to impose emergency.Rahul was quizzed by the students on issues ranging from hiearchial politics in India, to his visits to Dalit Houses, economic growth in the country and education reforms. Some papers, however, reported Rahul's visit to JNU as a political attempt to strengthen the newly constituted unit of NSUI at JNU.