'Appropriate time' for Rahul to take over as Congress President: Veerappa Moily

Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], September 16 (ANI): Senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily on Saturday hinted that Rahul Gandhi may be elevated as the new party chief soon.

Talking to ANI, Moily said, "This is an appropriate time for Rahul Gandhi to take over as the Congress president. He is the most deserving person and I appreciate that he is highly 'democrat' in mind and action."

"He would like to emerge as the president of AICC only through the election process", said Moily.

Praising Rahul Gandhi, Moily further said, "He has inherited the value of democracy, secularism, liberalism from Jawaharlal Nehru and he keeps us reminding of the latter."

On that note, recently the Congress vice-president also said that he is "absolutely ready" to become the party chief.

Brushing aside the allegations on Congress of carrying the dynasty culture, Moily recalled the tenure of former Prime Ministers like Narsimha Rao, Lal Bahadur Shahstri, and Manmohan Singh, who didn't belong to any political family.

Further, commenting on Bureacrat-turned-Union Minister KJ Alphons's recent statement on justifying price hike, the former Union Minister termed the remarks as 'atrocious".

Calling Alphons a true follower of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "The statement lacks government skills. This is the problem with our Prime Minister that he is only an event manager and not a performer. He doesn't know the reality; he just jumps from one event to another."

Talking a shot at the Bharatiya Janata Party he said that it has disrupted the economy of the country and the GDP is lowest in the current time.

KJ Alphons, earlier in the day, said that people who own bikes and cars are not starving and can afford to pay higher prices for fuel.

His comments came at a time when fuel prices are at a three-year high when international crude prices have crashed attracted strong criticism from opposition parties which described them as insensitive to the common man's problems.

"So we are going to tax people who can afford to pay. Somebody who has a car, bike; certainly he is not starving. Somebody who can afford to pay, has to pay," he said. (ANI)