CWC meeting to be held on Sunday

India

oi-Prakash KL

New Delhi, Aug 27: The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body, will hold a virtual meeting on Sunday to approve the schedule of dates for the election of the Congress president.

A day after senior politician Ghulam Nabi Azad quit the grand old party, Congress has decided to conduct the crucial meeting.

Party’s interim president Sonia Gandhi will preside over the CWC meeting.

Several leaders have been publicly exhorting Rahul Gandhi to become party chief again. However, uncertainty and suspense continue on the issue. Several party insiders have told PTI that Rahul Gandhi is persisting with his stance that he will not be the AICC president.

He resigned as Congress president after the party suffered its second consecutive defeat in Parliamentary elections in 2019.

Sonia Gandhi, who took over the reins of the party again as interim president, had also offered to quit in August 2020 after an open revolt by a section of leaders, referred to as G-23, but the CWC had urged her to continue.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from all party positions, including its primary membership, delivering another blow to the embattled party that has seen a series of leaders leave it.

In a five page letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he said he does so with a “heavy heart”.

The Congress, he said, has lost both the will and the ability under tutelage of the coterie that runs the AICC to fight for what is right for India, Azad, part of the G-23 group seeking change in party, said.

Before starting a ‘Bharat jodo yatra’, the leadership should have undertaken a ‘Congress jodo yatra’, the veteran leader said in his letter.