Cong flip-flop over Rahul Gandhi-Chinese envoy meet a self-inflicted wound

Meeting could have been used to underline that the party has not been rendered irrelevant

What would otherwise have been dismissed as a routine meeting between Rahul Gandhi and Chinese ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui snowballed into a full-scale controversy on June 10 thanks to the incompetence of the Congress vice-president’s office.

On the morning of June 10, as the media reported that Gandhi had met Luo on July 8, the Congress first stoutly denied that any such meeting had taken place. Later, the party and Rahul Gandhi himself admitted that the meeting was indeed held, at the behest of Luo.

When the news of the meeting first emerged, Congress party spokespersons, who were obviously clueless about