Last week, United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi called an emergency meeting of Rajya Sabha members from the Congress and other opposition parties to discuss the floor strategy during the discussion and voting on the Right to Information (amendment) bill.
The same week, she came to the aid of her colleague Manish Tewari, who was speaking during Zero Hour on US president Donald Trump’s claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had invited him to mediate on the Kashmir issue. She pulled out a sheaf of papers listing details of Trump’s comments (made the previous evening, India time), which Tewari quoted from in the course of his speech.
On July 8, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader TR Baalu led a walkout of his party colleagues over the President rejecting two bills passed by the Tamil Nadu assembly on admitting students to medical college solely on the basis of their Class 12 marks. Baalu was visibly upset with the Congress members for not keeping quiet while he was speaking (they were protesting the then ongoing drama in Karnataka).
The DMK, like most other parties in Tamil Nadu want the state to be outside the purview of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). According to a Congress leader familiar with the matter who asked not to be named, when Gandhi was told that the Congress could not, as a national party, oppose NEET, she said party members from Tamil Nadu should have supported Baalu whose party is an ally of the Congress.
The three anecdotes -- there are many more -- indicate that the ongoing leadership crisis in the Congress has forced Gandhi to step up her own involvement in Parliament.