Rahul Gandhi Asks Party to Find His Replacement
NEW DELHI :Congress president Rahul Gandhi, in a meeting with senior Congress leaders Ahmed Patel and KC Venugopal on Monday, categorically stated that the Grand Old Party will have to find a new face to lead it.
Rahul has categorically said that the party will have to find a new chief as he won’t change his mind about stepping down from the post of the party chief according to a report.
Saturday, Gandhi had offered to resign from his post at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, but his proposal was rejected unanimously by the CWC members who asked him to continue amid challenging conditions.
The Congress chief refused to meet the newly-elected MPs who called on him. Gandhi, who has decided to step down from his post after the poll drubbing of Congress, has also cancelled all his meetings and appointments.
After the Congress Working Committee unanimously rejected Rahul Gandhi’s offer to resign as the party president on Saturday, sources said that the he remains determined to step down.According to one Congress leader, he has asked senior functionaries of the party to find his replacement soon.
According to a tv channel report ” until the party finds a new person for the top job, but is “determined to quit”. It also reported that both his mother Sonia Gandhi and sister Priyanka agree with his decision although they had initially tried to convince him against it.
“It is not necessary that the president should be from Gandhi family,” NDTV quoted Congress sources as saying. He reportedly shot down the idea that his sister Priyanka could be his replacement. “Don’t drag my sister into it,” Gandhi is supposed to have said when Priyanka’s name came up.
According to multiple reports, Rahul pulled up senior leaders like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan chief ministers Kamal Nath and Ashok Gehlot for focussing only on the constituencies from where their sons were contesting. He also supposedly said that senior leaders of the party did not back his “chowkidar chor hai” campaign enough.
Meanwhile, the Congress is also reflecting on who could be its next parliamentary party leader. Mallikarjun Kharge, who lost from his stronghold of Gulbarga in Karnataka, had led the Congress in the last Lok Sabha. A Congress leader said that Shashi Tharoor, MP from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, MP from Baharampur in West Bengal, were under consideration for the post.
according to senior party leader that no discussion on who could be the next leader of the party in the Lok Sabha has formally been initiated. He said that over the next few days, the party should decide on a name.
Like last time, the party has again fallen short of the required numbers to nominate one of its elected MPs for the leader of opposition position. A minimum of 55 seats, or at least 10% of the total strength of Lok Sabha, is required for that chair. Congress could get only 52 seats in the recently-concluded elections.
In a statement today, the Congress asked the media to “respect the sanctity” of the closed-door meeting of its working committee and “not fall into the trap of conjectures or speculations and await the calibrated efforts by the Congress party towards future course of action”.
The statement came after reports that at the Working Committee on Saturday, Rahul Gandhi – roundly blamed for a disastrous campaign that made no difference to the BJP’s colossal victory — did some tough-talking, reminding party leaders that they had put their sons before the party and “pushed” for their candidature in the Lok Sabha polls.
Mr Gandhi did not name anyone, but several sons and daughters of Congress veterans lost the election. The list includes Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, son of Madhavrao Scindia, Manvendra Singh, son of former BJP Union minister Jaswant Singh, Sushmita Dev, daughter of former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev.
Former minister P Chidambaram reportedly became emotional and said some supporters, especially from the south, could take the “extreme step” if he resigned. Mr Gandhi reportedly made it clear that he would not “vanish” and would continue to work for the party. “It is not necessary that the president should be from Gandhi family,” sources quoted him as saying firmly. When Priyanka Gandhi’s name came up as an alternative, Mr Gandhi reportedly said: “Don’t drag my sister into it.”
In the starkest symbol of the Congress’s complete collapse in the election, Mr Gandhi also lost his traditional seat Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. He would not be in parliament had he not contested and won from Wayanad in Kerala.
The Congress was demolished in 17 states, including Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the states it won in December. The party also failed the test in Karnataka, another state it rules in alliance with HD Kumarasamy. Only in Punjab, where it has been in power since 2017, did Congress win eight of 13 seats.
