New Delhi: Slogans of Rahul Gandhi Zindabad and Sonia Gandhi Zindabad reverberated through the air on Sunday as thousands of Congress supporters reached the Ramlila Maidan here to raise their voice against price rise and unemployment. Many Congress workers, who came to attend the 'Mehngai Par Halla Bol' rally, put up banners demanding Rahul Gandhi to once again lead the party.
"We want Rahul Gandhi as INC President," read the posters. Rahul ji is our true leader and we have full faith in him that he will restore the glory of the Congress. He should be made the party president, Deepesh Singh, who came to attend the rally from Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh, said.The rally comes ahead of the opposition party's 3,500-km 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, starting September 7, highlighting the issues of price rice and unemployment, and promoting communal harmony.
Rahul had resigned from the top post following the party's debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Sonia Gandhi has been leading the party as interim president since August, 2019. Rahul and a host of party leaders are expected to address the rally. Party workers from Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, besides other parts of the country, will participate in it.
Congress has deferred its presidential election to next month. The chorus for Rahul Gandhi to become the party's national chief has been growing. Many party leaders have openly demanded that he be made the president, the post he quit in June 2019 after a poll debacle. However, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi has declined to run for the party chief's post again even as efforts are on to persuade him.
Senior leaders such as Mallikarjun Kharge and Salman Khurshid have said that they will try to convince Rahul Gandhi on the matter. Ahead of the notification on the election, some Congress leaders have raised the issue of electoral rolls also, saying that it should be made public. Party leaders such as Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Karti Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor have already expressed their opinion on the issue of electoral rolls.
They have urged the party's Central Election Authority (CEA), headed by senior Congress leader Madhusudan Mistry, to make the electoral rolls public by making them available on the Congress website. However, the CEA has said that these rolls would be made available only to the candidates contesting the poll. (with Agency inputs)
