Seems like time has traveled a full circle as the chairperson of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi filed a nomination form for the Rajya Sabha elections from Rajasthan on Wednesday. The leader who has never known anything except for winning her constituency whether it was Amethi, Bellari, or Rae Bareli, has now opted for a safer option – the Rajya Sabha seat. As she becomes the Rajya Sabha MP, she will be the second member of the Gandhi family to do so.
Before this, it was Indira Gandhi who became a Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh in 1964 after the demise of Jawaharlal Nehru. She started her parliamentary career with the upper house. As quoted by Kuldeep Nayyar in his book ‘Beyond The Lines’, Indira Gandhi never liked Lal Bahadur Shastri. She used to make him wait for 2-3 hours to meet Pt. Nehru when the latter was the PM. Shastri sensed that Nehru wanted Indira to be the PM in the future. After he died, as Shastri succeeded him, he was a little skeptical about the portfolio to be given to Indira Gandhi. He didn’t want to give her a strong portfolio initially. As fate would have it, after becoming an MP, Indira herself asked for a small portfolio which made Shastri’s task easier.
Thereupon she became the information and broadcast minister. In 1966, when Lal Bahadur Shastri died in Tashkent, she being the Rajya Sabha MP took oath as the prime minister. With that, she became the first Rajya Sabha MP to be the PM.
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Now, after 60 years, another member of the family has filed a nomination for Rajya Sabha. Whom will Congress field from its citadel Rae Bareli now? As Rahul had already lost Amethi to Smriti Irani in 2019, it’s being speculated that Sonia’s constituency might go to Priyanka Gandhi to test her destiny in elections.
