The Congress party may get a new president in January next year. There is a possibility that the Congress party may call an All India Congress Committee (AICC) meeting in January next year to elect its new president. Two senior party leaders associated with the matter gave this information to the media.
At the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on Monday, a section of Congress leaders initially suggested that the session should be held within a year, but Rahul Gandhi and several other leaders insisted on holding it in the next six months. .
The party also likes the January schedule for this massive organizational exercise of the Congress, as there will be no major election after Bihar assembly elections this year. In the year 2021, elections to five assemblies – Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry – will be held in April, by then the Congress will have ample time to come together with a reconstituted team headed by a new leader and strengthen the party.
At the Congress Working Committee meeting, Sonia Gandhi had offered her resignation as interim president and asked the CWC to start the process to find a new chief. Sonia Gandhi is the interim president of the party since August 2019. But many leaders, including Manmohan Singh, urged her to continue in her post until the new president was elected. In fact, there was a lot of ruckus in Meeting over a letter written by 23 senior leaders and through a letter demanding a change in leadership.
Party leaders also said that Rahul Gandhi, who led the party for two years between 2017 and 2019, is against re-election, but thousands of Congress workers and many leaders want to see him again as the leader of the party. It is also believed that these leaders and activists will not approve the President outside the Gandhi family.
Sonia Gandhi has already completed a one-year term as the party’s interim president. She was the party president for more than 19 years from May 1998 to December 2017, after which Rahul Gandhi took over the reins of the party. However, he resigned in May 2019, taking responsibility for the defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.
Actually, the session of the All India Congress Committee is a marathon process, which begins with a membership campaign from the state level and election of representatives. The Congress president has been elected unanimously in the party’s recent history, except in one instance when Jitendra Prasad decided to contest against Sonia Gandhi in 2000 and lost badly.
