The elections for appointing a Congress president will be held in September next year, according to reports.
A final decision to this effect will be taken at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) - the party's highest decision-making body – underway in Delhi to finalise the schedule for organisational election that will include choosing a new party chief to replace Sonia Gandhi as interim president.
The party in its CWC meeting held on January 22 had decided that the Congress would have an elected president by June 2021, but it was deferred at the May 10 CWC meet in the wake of the COVID-19 situation.
Election for Congress’ top post has been in turmoil ever since the party's debacle in 2019. Rahul Gandhi, who took over the post from mother Sonia Gandhi in 2017, stepped down after the 2019 defeat. The Congress has since failed to find a replacement and, thus, urged Sonia Gandhi to continue as the party’s interim chief.
READ: CWC Meet: Sonia Gandhi calls herself full-time Congress President, urges discipline among cadre
“Today is the occasion for bringing clarity once and for all. A schedule for full-fledged organisational elections is before you. General secretary, organisation, Venugopal ji will brief you on the entire process later,” Sonia Gandhi said in her opening remarks at the CWC meet on October 16.
This is the first in-person meeting of the CWC since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.
In an apparent message to the G23, Sonia Gandhi has said that she is a full-time, hands-on party president and there is no need for leaders to speak to her through the media.
Her remarks came days after Kapil Sibal, one of the leaders of the group of 23 who had written to Sonia Gandhi for organisational overhaul last year, demanded that an immediate meeting of the CWC be convened and wondered who in the party was taking decisions in the absence of a full-time president.
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