NEW DELHI (TIP): Decision not to make Rahul PM candidate is final: SoniaNEW DELHI: The decision of the Congress party not to project Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate in the forthcoming general elections is final, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said in her speech at the AICC meet in New Delhi. “Whatever decision the Congress Working Committee (CWC) took on Thursday with regard to Rahul Gandhi is final,” Sonia said. Despite AICC delegates shouting slogans demanding Rahul as Congress’s PM candidate, Sonia said there was a need to send a message that the party was ready for the Lok Sabha elections and does need to name a PM nominee before polls. “The upcoming elections will witness a fight between ideologies and the Congress remains committed to its values,” she added.

The Congress president also said the 2014 Lok Sabha election will be “a battle for India” and its secular traditions. “We assemble here as the 2014 Lok Sabha elections approach. We meet today to send a clear signal that the Congress is ready and prepared for the battle ahead,” she said in her address at the All India Congress Committee meeting here. “These elections will be a battle for India as it was conceived by our founding fathers. It will be a battle for our secular traditions,” she said. The UPA chairperson said: “The Congress has faced much difficult times in the past. Much harder than today.” “Our party is woven into the fabric of this nation from its very conception as a modern nation state,” she added.

Highlights of Sonia Gandhi’s speech:
1. We are the party that is responsible of the RTI Act
2. I appeal all parties to pass the pending Anti-Corruption Bills in the Parliament
3. We will do our utmost to get crucial anticorruption bills passed
4. I had presented a 5-point action plan to combat corruption,2 years ago; since then Lokpal Act has been passed by Parliament