The Congress on Friday said the party will soon start the procedure to elect a new president and indicated that Rahul Gandhi may be back in the saddles again, saying that majority of Congressmen want that he be again chosen as full-time party chief.
The grand old party is likely to hold the AICC session in January to elect the new president, for which the party leadership will discuss and chalk out the plans.
AICC chief spokesman and party General Secretary Randeep Surjewala said that Congress will soon start the procedure to elect a new party president, adding that 99.9 percent of people, including himself, want Rahul Gandhi to take charge as the next president of the Congress.
Electoral College of Congress, AICC members, Congress workers & members will choose who’s best suited, Surjewala said at AICC Press conference.
While Rahul Gandhi early this week during a meeting with few senior leaders reiterated his stand that he will not wear the chief’s mantle again which he relinquished last year after the dismal performance of the party in Lok Sabha elections.
Incidentally, , AICC sources said incumbent chief Sonia Gandhi is scheduled to meet party dissenters and other top leaders soon to discuss “key” issues concerning the grand old party.
Sonia has expressed her desire not to continue as interim Congress chief and asked the party to start the process to elect a new party chief.
The party’s recent poor performances in the state assembly elections of Bihar and Maharashtra have turned several of its eminent leaders into dissenters.
Sonia is expected to hold talks with her confidants about the new Congress chief and revive the party in states going to poll in 2021.
AICC sources said Sonia will also meet some of the prominent members of the “letter-writers group”, who had been demanding an overhaul of the party. Among them are the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and the deputy leader of the party in the Upper House, Anand Sharma.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, who lost power in the state, after his bete noire Jyotiraditya Scindia quit the party and joined the BJP along with several MLAs, is also slated to meet Sonia and discuss the fallout of the recently-concluded bypolls in the state, in which the Congress failed to make a mark.
This is the first time that Sonia Gandhi will be meeting her party leaders in person after the pandemic. So far she has been holding virtual meetings including the crucial CWC meet in which party leaders discussed the “letter” by the group of 23 leaders demanding a change in the leadership and an overhaul of the party organizational structure.