Scion walks into waiting throne

Rahul Gandhi is set to be Congress president in place of his mother Sonia Gandhi as he filed his nomination for the post and the deadline for doing so expectedly ended on Monday without any challenger emerging.

This concludes a year-long organisational election process and heralds a generational shift in the leadership of the 132-year-old party.

Rahul filed papers at the Congress's 24 Akbar Road headquarters here. The party sought to project the election as democratic to counter the BJP's charges of dynastic politics.

The Congress had missed many deadlines and the Election Commission had asked it to conclude the election process by December 31.

Sonia was the first to nominate her son. She signed the papers at her next door home. As many as 89 nominations were filed, all of them in favour of Rahul, signed by 890 delegates representing 30 state Congress units.

Celebrations for Rahul's coronation have been kept for December 28 to coincide it with the party's foundation day.

Rahul first met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former President Pranab Mukherjee to seek their blessings and then went to the party office where he hugged senior party leaders Sheila Dikshit and Mohsina Kidwai.

The party said that two more exercises -- scrutiny of nominations on December 5 and withdrawal of nominations on December 11 – were still to be done. But Rahul's elevation is a mere formality.

The 47-year-old has been the Congress's vice-president for almost five years. Sonia has been the party's longest serving president. She has been leading the Congress for 19 years since 1998.

Since early morning, almost all prominent Congress leaders had assembled at the party headquarters. Rahul held meetings with office bearers. Insiders said that he sat alone for 30 minutes before filing nominations.

At about 11:04 am, the time selected by soothsayers as auspicious, he walked into a hall where nominations were to be filed.

As per the party constitution, every nomination requires 10 elected delegates as proposers and seconders. The recently concluded organisational polls have elected 7,500 delegates, each representing a block from all over the country.

While Akbar Road was jam-packed with party workers and leaders, the message from Rahul's office was to keep celebrations sombre. Party office bearers were seen asking Youth Congress activists not to burn fire crackers.

"Rahul ji has been the darling of the Congress... Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," the normally taciturn Manmohan Singh told reporters.

"We are very happy that Rahul Gandhi ji has filed his nomination... I am confident that Rahul will turn out a very successful leader. And under his leadership, the Congress will regain power," Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, said.