New Delhi: Former union minister and Congress veteran KK Tewary said on Sunday that a letter written by some party leaders calling for a change in leadership and an organisational overhaul is an 'organised coup' by the BJP and promotes its agenda of 'Congress-mukt Bharat'.
He said the issues raised by the leaders deserved serious scrutiny by the leadership and in the same breath added that the Gandhi family should keep the reins of the party or else it would disintegrate.
The former minister said the Congress leaders who wrote the letter have never contested elections and have fallen into a trap laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
"This is an organised coup by the Modi-Shah duo and this only promoted their agenda of a Congress-mukt Bharat. This is part of the BJP-RSS plan to further weaken the Congress party," Tewary told Media.
In their letter, a group of former ministers and some MPs have called for the appointment of a full-time, active leadership easily accessible to workers and leaders.
The leaders have also called for bringing changes in the organisation by effecting reforms through decentralisation of power and empowerment of state units, besides setting up of the Central Parliamentary Board, a body that existed in the 1970s but was later wound up.
Tewary said the people who have signed the letter have for decades enjoyed the patronage of the Nehru-Gandhi family and "they have flourished for decades as they carved out their own empires out of the party".
"They walked into the trap of the BJP and are collaborating with the BJP-RSS propaganda that the Congress is dead. They are collaborators of BJP. They do not realise the danger that the BJP-RSS pose to the survival of democracy in the country and its unity and integrity," he said.
The Congress veteran said the party leadership should remain with the Gandhi family as "without them, the Congress will disintegrate".