Sonia set to be re-elected as Congress president

Sonia Gandhi will continue her uninterrupted reign as Congress president till the next party election takes place after three years. No one in the party has filed a nomination for the post.

This was a clear message of unquestioned loyalty towards the party boss. From Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to party general secretary Rahul Gandhi, all top Congress party leaders signed nomination papers proposing Gandhi as the candidate for the president’s post.

Each nomination paper comprises names of 10 proposers. In the first paper, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony and Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office Prithviraj Chavan joined Singh to recommend her name. After Sonia Gandhi signed and approved the first nomination paper – brought at 10 Janpath by the Prime Minister himself –Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee arrived with the second nomination paper.

Ambika Soni and a few other central ministers had joined Mukherjee to nominate Gandhi’s name. The third paper was forwarded by Congress treasurer Motilal Vora and Rahul Gandhi. While the Prime Minister avoided coming to the Congress headquarters (due to security reasons) to submit the papers to the party’s Central Election Authority, Rahul Gandhi, accompanied Vora to the party office and stood beside him while the paper was handed over to Oscar Fernandes, the returning officer of the election wing of the party.

Sonia Gandhi has already set two records — of being the longest serving president of the party and also completing the longest uninterrupted term (she is the only president who continued to hold the post for more than 10 years). This will be her third election as the president after getting nominated for the post in an emergency Congress Working Committee meeting on March 14 1998.

The party will officially endorse her new term in the plenary session of the Congress some time in December.

While most states have completed their organisational elections before the elected representatives voted for Gandhi, the Andhra, Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, Kerala and Tamil Nadu units couldn’t hold their internal polls. The central command of the party has now set a deadline of September 17 for the election of the new state unit presidents.