Since the party’s top decision-making body, the CWC, met over the weekend and reaffirmed their support in the Gandhis’ leadership despite electoral losses, the dissidents have organised a series of meetings.
Congress Speaker Sonia Gandhi met with party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday, a day after their hard-core “G-23” dissidents held a third round of talks after the massive crash of the election.
Dissidents have held a series of meetings since Wednesday, angered by the attitude of Gandhi family loyalists at the meeting of the party’s highest decision-making body, the Congress Working Committee.
Loyalists insist on reasserting Gandhi’s leadership despite the serial losses. At the last CWC meeting, party leaders rejected Sonia Gandhi’s offer to resign from all positions along with her children, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
The G-23 has persisted in its efforts to restructure the organization since its first letter to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 after a series of electoral defeats.
The Congress lost Punjab and was virtually wiped out in Uttar Pradesh and the other states. The group had said in a statement Wednesday that “the only way forward for Congress is to embrace a model of inclusive and collective leadership and decision-making at all levels.”
They insisted they wanted to empower Congress and not “undermine it in any way.” Sonia Gandhi’s meeting was seen as part of a larger family effort to reach the G-23.
On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi addressed former Haryana Prime Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who attended the G-23 meeting on Wednesday. During the meeting, Mr. Hooda asked for clarification on who makes decisions within the party, sources said. Stressing the need to make decisions collectively,
Mr. Hooda told Rahul Gandhi that leaders often learn of party decisions from newspapers. Mr Hooda also said the G-23 leadership did not engage in “anti-party activity”, adding that the faction’s meeting took place after Sonia Gandhi was briefed.