New Delhi : August 25, 2020. A day after the stormy Congress Working Committee meeting — which was triggered by a dissent letter seeking organisation overhaul in the party— senior leader Kapil Sibal said that “it is not about a post” but about the country that matters most.
Sibal is among the 23 Congress leaders who in a letter to Sonia Gandhi called for sweeping reforms within Congress. “It’s not about a post. It’s about my country which matters most,” Sibal said in a cryptic tweet, without elaborating.
After the seven-hour meeting, the CWC urged Sonia Gandhi to continue as its interim chief till an AICC session can be convened. It is learned that the party has decided to set up a committee to assist Sonia to look into “all issues,” including those raised by the 23 leaders.
Most of those present at the virtual meeting slammed the 23, questioned and criticised the intent and the timing of their letter even as they pledged loyalty to the Sonia-Rahul family and “resolved to strengthen their hands.” During the meeting, Rahul Gandhi questioned the timing of the letter, arguing that it was sent at a time when the party was fighting to save its government in Rajasthan and when his mother was in hospital
Sibal had hit out at Rahul Gandhi on Twitter on Monday for his alleged signatories of the letter were working in “collusion with the BJP”, saying he had never made a statement in favour of BJP in last 30 years. Sibal later deleted his tweet, saying Rahul informed him “personally that he never said what was attributed to him”. The Congress later clarified that Rahul Gandhi never made such remarks and warned against being misled by “false media discourse”.
After the CWC meeting, party leaders including Sibal, Anand Sharma and Shashi Tharoor, met at Ghulam Nabi Azad’s house on Monday evening. Sharma told The Indian Express that “the co-signatories were keen to know about the deliberations” and that “everybody is satisfied”.
The signatories to the letter included Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad; party MPs and former Union Ministers Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor; MP Vivek Tankha; AICC office bearers and CWC members including Mukul Wasnik and Jitin Prasada and former Chief Ministers and Union Ministers including Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Rajender Kaur Bhattal, M Veerappa Moily, Prithviraj Chavan, P J Kurian, Ajay Singh, Renuka Chaudhary, and Milind Deora; former PCC chiefs Raj Babbar (UP), Arvinder Singh Lovely (Delhi) and Kaul Singh Thakur (Himachal); current Bihar campaign chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh, former Haryana Speaker Kuldeep Sharma; former Delhi Speaker Yoganand Shastri and former MP Sandeep Dixit.
