Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said Gandhi would be a “bold voice for the Indian people” who would ensure the government was “strictly accountable at all times”.
He added that party president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul’s mother, had written to the caretaker speaker of Parliament to inform him that her son “has been appointed leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha,” the lower chamber of Parliament.
In the recent legislative elections, Rahul Gandhi exceeded analysts’ expectations, and the Congress Party won twice the seats it held in the previous parliament, in the best result for the party since Modi came to power ten years ago.
The Congress Party leadership on Saturday voted unanimously to recommend that Gandhi be formally elected as India’s leader of the opposition, a position that has been vacant since 2014.
Rahul Gandhi comes from the largest political family in India, as he is the son of Rajiv Gandhi, the grandson of Indira Gandhi, and the great-grandson of independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, all of whom are former prime ministers.
Parliamentary regulations require that the opposition leader belong to a party that controls at least 10 percent of the 543-seat House of Representatives.
This position remained vacant for ten years after two poor results for the Congress Party in the previous two rounds of elections.
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