To elect president, CWC to fix date today

Adit Tandon

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New Delhi, August 27

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) will meet on Sunday to finalise the schedule and the date for the election to the post of full-time party president.

The meeting will be held in a virtual mode, with interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi currently abroad for her treatment accompanied by her children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra.

‘Plan B’ in works

• Insiders say the Gandhis are keen on Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot entering the poll fray in case Rahul Gandhi refuses for good
• Gehlot has been saying he would keep urging Rahul “till the last minute” to heed the voice of Congress workers and lead them

The date, and the plan for nomination, withdrawal and scrutiny of forms for the key election will be finalised. The window for the election as previously approved by the CWC is until September 20.

The CWC is also likely to take note of former Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad’s shock exit from the party yesterday and his caustic letter to Sonia Gandhi, slamming the party’s working style and lamenting that she had been a mere figure head since May 2019 after her son Rahul resigned as party chief while he, worse still, his personal assistants and security guards, made decisions.

Azad also accused Sonia of applying UPA’s remote-control model of working to the Congress and said discussions and outcomes of past “chintan shivirs” were never implemented and were left to gather dust in AICC offices for years.

Sources say the CWC could likely back Sonia and denounce personal attacks on her by a leader “whom the party gave everything, including five terms in the Rajya Sabha, chief ministership in Jammu and Kashmir, general secretary role across all states and finally the position of the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha”.

The CWC could also make a last-ditch effort to urge Rahul to take up the party mantle by entering the election fray although a plan B, insiders say, is in the works. The Gandhis are keen on Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot entering the poll fray in case Rahul refuses for good.

Gehlot has been saying he would keep urging Rahul “till the last minute” to heed the voice of Congress workers and lead them.

It remains to be seen who finally emerges in the race for the election.

Azad, meanwhile, declared in his letter that the ongoing internal polls were a sham and pre-prepared list of voters were signed by AICC leaders “handpicked by the coterie that runs the party”.

A section of G23 sources maintain the electoral rolls for the impending election are compromised and, therefore, the process is questionable and non-transparent.