NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi, heir of Nehru-Gandhi family, still needs to prove himself, and his promotion in the Congress party should not be seen as a first step in an inevitable rise to the top, his mother and party chief Sonia Gandhi said on Friday.
Thirty-seven-year-old Rahul was made one of Congress' general-secretaries last month, in a move which analysts said was partly aimed at grooming him for a shot at the prime ministership in the future.
But his Italian-born mother Sonia, who heads the governing coalition and is seen as India's most powerful politician, said that was 'not accurate at all'.
"Yes of course in our family, many families whose earlier generations have been in politics, the name or the family or the experience of the family gives you a headstart, it helps in the beginning," she said.
"But in our system, which is a democratic system, you have to prove yourself and unless you prove yourself you cannot go ahead," she said.
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has ruled India for much of its post-independence life. Rahul's great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was the country's first prime minister in 1947.
His grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv both also ran the country, and were both assassinated.
Rahul's promotion was also seen as a move to invigorate the party leadership ahead of elections in 2008 or 2009.
Sonia said her son, had a lot of hard work ahead, and played down talk that his promotion was overdue.
"From the beginning he felt that he ought to gain some experience and only then, when he felt that he had began to understand and to learn, only then he would take on a new assignment and a responsibility, and that's what he has done."
The shy, bespectacled Rahul, a Cambridge-educated business consultant, surprised the country by entering politics and contesting polls in 2004, ahead of his more charismatic sister Priyanka.
He entered parliament after winning in the family borough of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, but has kept a low profile ever since.
