Crucial Cong meet begins at Sonia Gandhi's place, some of G23 also present

At least 15 leaders on Saturday arrived at the residence of Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi here, including several of the G23 leaders who had written for an active president in the party.

The leaders included Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Vivek Tanka, former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Prithviraj Chavhan, Ambika Soni, Manish Tewari, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Pawan Bansal, Harish Rawat, Anand Sharma, Shashi Tharoor, A.K. Antony and several others.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, besides veteran Ajay Maken also arrived for the meeting at 10, Janpath.

This is the first meeting of the Congress, after 23 senior leaders wrote to Sonia Gandhi demanding for an active President.

On Friday, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said that Sonia Gandhi had been unable to physically meet them on account of Covid-19 protocol for a considerable amount of time.

"Now she has decided that from tomorrow she is going to meet and decide various organisational issues. So this is not a meet of any specific group of leaders. This is not a meet of dissenters or rebels because we consider each leader and worker as part of our family," Surjewala said.

He said that the party has addressed the issues raised by some of the senior members of the party and it has already been decided to hold the election to the post of president.

"That process is underway, all the issues should be resolved with the announcement of the next election. There are no internal issues of dissent that are pending in the party of any nature," he said.

Surjewala said the BJP sometimes continues to propagate such insinuations which Congress leaders do not believe in, including those who have written the letter.

"We are one family and we will work together and we will work to strengthen the party," he added.

--IANS

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