Congress President Sonia Gandhi decided not to celebrate her birthday on Wednesday in the face of the ongoing farmers’ agitation and the Covid-19 pandemic, a party official said Tuesday.
The leader, who will turn 74 on December 9th, is currently in Goa after doctors have advised her to move out of Delhi due to heavy pollution and poor air quality that has aggravated her chest infection.
Her son and former president of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, are accompanying her.
Even last year, she did not celebrate her birthday following the rise of rape incidents in various parts of the country and women’s security concerns.
The decision came after the death of a rape victim, who had been set on fire, in a hospital in Delhi, and also after a young vet had been raped, killed, and set on fire in Hyderabad last year by four people.
Congress has already extended its support to the agitation of farmers and demanded that the three new agricultural laws be repealed.
Sonia Gandhi made a brief appearance at the Indira Gandhi Memorial on November 19 to pay tribute to the late Prime Minister on her 103rd birthday.
Earlier, after chairing a meeting of Rajya Sabha party members, she was admitted to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi on 30 July. A party official said She was under heavy medication following her discharge from the hospital in August.”
On September 12, Sonia Gandhi went to the United States for a few days for her routine medical check-up, accompanied by Rahul Gandhi. The two missed Parliament’s monsoon session from September 14 to 23.
She had made major organisational changes before leaving for the US, had reconstituted the Congress Working Committee and her team of office bearers, and had also set up a special panel to assist her in organisational and operational matters.
Sonia Gandhi left Delhi at a time when the Bihar assembly elections and by-polls in several states are rumbling in Congress over the debacle with a group of 23 dissenters, who wrote a letter to the party leader in August this year seeking organisational revision, calling for introspection on the electoral setbacks.
