New Delhi: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who returned from abroad recently, was back in action on Monday as she sought clarifications from senior leaders on some pressing issues.
According to sources, Sonia Gandhi sought clarification from Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor over his candidature for the post of next Congress president. Tharoor, who had hinted at the same a few weeks ago, had later clarified that he would clarify his position before the nominations for the post of next party chief take place between September 24 to 30.
Though Tharoor is a former union minister of state and has been in the good books of both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, he was also part of the G23, a group of senior dissenters who had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi in 2020, demanding internal party polls and a full-time, visible elected party president.
Interestingly, hours before he met Sonia Gandhi, Tharoor backed an online petition, being circulated by some party leaders, urging all those who want to contest the Congress president elections that they will implement the Udaipur Declaration within 100 days of assuming the top party post. “The am happy to endorse the petition which has been signed by 650 people,” said Tharoor.
Among the key organizational reforms in the Udaipur Declaration, approved after 400 party leaders brainstormed over the future roadmap for three days in May, was to have 50 percent of all office bearers below 50 years of age, implement the one person, have one post principle, have one family, one ticket system and have term limits for electoral and party posts besides open up spaces for new people.
Interestingly, Tharoor, who represents Thiruvananthapuram in the Lok Sabha, had walked beside Rahul Gandhi recently, when the Bharat Jodo yatra had passed through Kerala’s capital.
According to sources, Sonia Gandhi wants the party president polls to be transparent and therefore immediately responded to complaints from senior Haryana leaders like Kumari Selja, Kiran Chaudhary and Randeep Surjewala that CLP leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda got the list of PCC delegates, who will vote in the election for next Congress president, with his loyalists.
The anti-Hooda camp had lodged their complaint with Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry, who is supervising the polls and has asked all state units to pass resolutions authorizing the new party president to appoint PCC chiefs and AICC members.
Sonia Gandhi sought clarifications over the issue from Deepender Hooda, the son of BS Hooda and the party MP from Haryana in the Rajya Sabha, said the sources. Besides the presidential polls, discontent brewing among the Jharkhand MLAs also came up for review when Sonia Gandhi took an update from AICC in charge Avinash Pande.
A few weeks ago, three Congress MLAs had been arrested along with huge cash by the West Bengal police, which is probing the case. Pande had then alleged that the huge cash had been given to the three lawmakers by the BJP which wanted to topple the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance government in the tribal state.
Later, an internal probe was also ordered into the incident to figure out how deep was the problem in the state unit and take corrective steps.
“The Congress chief discussed the Jharkhand political situation. As far as the three MLAs are concerned, we had suspended them earlier. Now, we have moved a plea before the Assembly Speaker to disqualify them,” AICC in charge of Jharkhand Avinash Pande told ETV Bharat.
“The state team is united and all our MLAs are together. This was proved during the recent trust vote. The Congress president also took an update on the meeting of PCC delegates to be held Sep 20 in Ranchi and discussed preparations for the Bharat Jodo Yatra in the state,” he said.
Sonia Gandhi, who had recently brought back veteran JP Agarwal as the new AICC in charge of Madhya Pradesh in place of Mukul Wasnik, also reviewed the state politics. Wasnik’s sudden removal had sparked off speculation that he may be named as a non-Gandhi candidate for the party chief polls in case Rahul Gandhi remained reluctant.
Agarwal, said sources, has been brought in to prepare for the 2023 MP assembly polls. However, sources also said that Wasnik had been asking that he be relieved of the MP charge for some months as he is busy with other party work. “It was a courtesy call. I had not met the Congress chief since my appointment. We discussed the state issues,” AICC in charge of Madhya Pradesh JP Agarwal told this channel.
According to Agarwal, he was in MP over the last two days and met MLAs as well the senior leaders. The MP Congress had been managed by the two veterans and former chief ministers Digvijay Singh, now coordinating the Bharat Jodo Yatra and PCC chief Kamal Nath, who is preparing for the big foot march slated to enter the state in November. “The Congress is in high spirits in MP. Preparations for the yatra are going on,” said Agarwal.
