New Delhi: The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's highest decision-making body, met on Sunday, under the chairmanship of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, to approve the schedule for the election of the next AICC chief and according to sources, the poll is likely to take place on October 17.
As per reports, the notification for the party president's election will be issued on September 22, while the filing of nomination would begin on September 24 and continue till September 30. The date of scrutiny has been scheduled on October 1 and the last date of withdrawal of nomination is October 8.
According to sources, the election, if required, will take place on October 17 and the date of counting and declaration of result will be October 19, 10am onwards.
The online CWC meeting started at 3:30pm with Sonia Gandhi presiding over it, flanked by former party chief Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Apart from them were Anand Sharma, who was part of the G-23 dissident group, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, party's central election authority chief Madhusudan Mistry, KC Venugopal, former union ministers Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik and P Chidambaram and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, along with his Chhattisgarh counterpart Bhupesh Baghel.
It is to be noted that the meeting took place amid an ongoing upheaval in the grand old party after the resignation of party veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday and his letter to party chief Sonia Gandhi in which he lashed out at Rahul Gandhi for "demolishing the party's entire consultative mechanism".
The Congress, dealing with the result of a series of high profile exits, including that of Kapil Sibal and Ashwani Kumar, has tried to deflect the latest blow by alleging that Azad's DNA had been "Modi-fied" and linked his resignation to the end of his Rajya Sabha tenure.
(With inputs from Jainendra Kumar)