After the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on August 24, Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi and former party president Rahul Gandhi called Ghulam Nabi Azad, one of the signatories on the "dissident" letter sent to Sonia Gandhi by over 20 party leaders.
According to a report by NDTV quoting sources, Sonia Gandhi spoke to Azad and assured him that his concerns will be addressed.
This came after Azad, who is the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Rajya Sabha, had come under criticism from within the party for being one of the signatories on the letter which called for organisational changes within Congress and demanded a "full-time, visible leadership".
According to the report, Rahul Gandhi, too, had a conversation with Azad earlier that day, when he had also called up Kapil Sibal, another senior Congress leader who had signed the letter.
Sibal had in a tweet slammed Gandhi after it was reported that the Congress scion had questioned the timing of the letter and accused those who wrote it of colluding with the BJP.
However, Sibal, after the call with Rahul Gandhi, withdrew his tweet.
According to the report, during the meeting, other senior party leaders such as Mallikarjun Kharge and Ambika Soni had called for a disciplinary action against those who wrote the letter. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury reportedly wanted Azad to be stopped from speaking during the CWC meeting.
"A section of media is wrongly attributing that, in CWC I told Rahul Gandhi to prove that the letter written by us is in collusion with BJP- let me make it very clear that Shri Rahul Gandhi has neither in CWC nor outside said that this letter was written at the behest of BJP," Azad had later said.
"Sonia Gandhi will stay interim president until an AICC session. The Congress will have a permanent president after six months, which is good as it will end ad-hocism," Azad told NDTV after the meeting.
