Sonia Gandhi To Finally Agrees To Meet The G23 Rebels, Will Congress Witness A Change In Leadership?

In addition to Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul may also be at the meeting over the weekend to meet the dissenters who have been demanding a change in leadership considering the party's poor performance in the previous polls.

(AFP)

Covid Vaccine Update: Speculations are rife that Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi has called a meeting of senior leaders, including the group of 23 dissenters, on Saturday to discuss the party’s strategy for the upcoming assembly elections besides the ongoing farmers’ agitation and the government’s decision not to hold the winter session of Parliament. Group of 23 members wrote to Sonia Gandhi seeking an overhaul of the party’s leadership twenty three leaders had signed the letter, but not all will be at the meeting. A core group of five or six leaders is likely to represent the wider concerns, it is believed. According to reports,  Congress claims it is not just a meeting between Sonia Gandhi and the rebels; others who were not signatories to the letter will also be present. Among the dissenters, leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, his deputy Anand Sharma and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda have been called for the meeting to be held at Sonia Gandhi’s 10, Janpath residence. So far, all party meetings during the pandemic have been held virtually. Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has also been invited to the meeting, said to have been called at the insistence of Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath who had met Sonia Gandhi last week and also interacted with some of the dissenters and convinced Sonia Gandhi to hold a discussion with them. The group of 23 signatories, also known as G-23, had written to the Congress president in August, seeking a full-time and active leadership and introspection behind the “steady decline” of the 135-year-old organisation while outlining an 11-point action plan. In her upcoming meetings, Sonia Gandhi is expected to discuss the party’s dismal show in the assembly polls in Bihar and by-polls to 58 seats in 11 states apart from the setbacks in the local bodies’ elections in Rajasthan, a state ruled by the Congress, ane Telangana, Goa, Kerala and Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in Assam.

Rahul Gandhi Rules Out Return As Congress Chief

According to reports, Rahul Gandhi has ruled out his return as Congress president as the party, struggling with an existential crisis and a perceived leadership vacuum prepares to elect a new chief in the New Year. The 50-year-old, who took over as Congress president from mother Sonia Gandhi in 2017, is still firm that a non-Gandhi should head the party. After he resigned last July, soon after the election results, party leaders tried to persuade him to change his mind for three months. A dramatic impasse, with Rahul Gandhi snubbing all moves to bring him back or refusing even to meet senior leaders, ended with a temporary solution. Sonia Gandhi, who led the party for 19 years before handing the charge to her son, was forced to return as interim Congress president.

Sonia Gandhi's health condition

Sonia Gandhi returned to Delhi on December 6 after staying in Goa for over a fortnight following doctors’ advice to shift out of the national capital because of heavy pollution and poor air quality that had aggravated a chest infection. Sonia Gandhi was hospitalised in July for a chest infection and has been on medication since then. On September 12, she went abroad for a routine medical check-up with Rahul Gandhi and skipped the monsoon session of Parliament, held between September 14 and 23 under special conditions because of COVID-19.