Rahul Gandhi has stamped his authority over the Congress as also the government with the Union Cabinet being forced to withdraw the controversial Ordinance on convicted lawmakers.
The short meeting of the Cabinet this evening was a long message on the authority that Gandhi commands.
All Congress ministers unanimously supported the demand for withdrawal of the Ordinance, which was earlier okayed in a meeting of Congress Core Group chaired by party President Sonia Gandhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by her side.
The Cabinet decision came after Rahul's public denunciation of the Ordinance as "complete nonsense" that deserved to be "torn and thrown away".
Gandhi's growing stature in the party has been more visible for the past one year especially after he was made Congress Vice President at the Jaipur Chintan Shivir in January this year.
The last reshuffle of the Union Cabinet in October and that of AICC also betrayed a Rahul stamp with young leaders being given key responsibilities.
The Ordinance issue is not the sole intervention by Gandhi but its coming months before the next general elections has kicked up the talk of generational change in the party.
A senior leader remarked that when a new leader emerges, he does not come alone, he brings his team.
Congress has so far refrained from naming Gandhi as its Prime Ministerial candidate despite growing demand within the party after Narendra Modi was anointed the PM candidate of the BJP.
Gandhi had earlier also made powerful interventions changing the course of legislations within the UPA. One of them was to bring sea change in the way farmers' land is acquired by government that saw the passage of new land acquisition bill in Monsoon session last month.
Sometime before he was made party Vice President, Gandhi was made the Chairman of a special party group to decide the strategy for next Lok Sabha elections.
