US Vice President Kamala Harris; Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi: New Delhi: US Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday had a telephonic conversation with Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, sources in the Congress said.
The conversation, Gandhi's first such with a major global leader after he assumed the constitutional post, assumes significance with the current US presidential race heating up.
Gandhi had an informal conversation with the vice-president, and the details of the conversation is not yet revealed, as per Congress sources.
Yet, the conversation has led to a significant amount of buzz with the probability of Harris eventually emerging as the Democratic Party’s challenger to Donald Trump with President Joe Biden losing support among Democratic circles due to his advanced age. Harris, who has African ancestry, too, has Indian heritage.
Since he became the LoP, the telephonic conversation with Harris is Gandhi’s first interaction with a global leader. Days before he assumed the post, Gandhi met Bangladesh President Sheikh Hasina along with Congress Parliamentary Party leader Sonia Gandhi and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra last month. Hasina was in India for the swearing-in of prime minister Narendra Modi.
Last year, in June, Gandhi met senior US officials, including Don Lu, assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the State Department. Prior to that, in 2017, when he was the party president, Gandhi met Barack Obama in December 2017, month’s after Obama’s presidency had ended. Gandhi’s meeting with UK’s then Leader of Opposition and current MP of Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2022 led to the BJP to attack him for the meeting.
The BJP had also attacked Gandhi when he had met with then Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui and Bhutanese ambassador Vetsop Namgyel during a Sino-Indian standoff in 2017. Gandhi, who was the Congress president then, had said that it was his job to be informed on critical issues.