Day after the Congress suffered a resounding defeat in the assembly elections in five states, the group of rebel leaders called G-23 is up in arms again. The G-23 leaders who are also the members of the Congress Working Committee are likely to raise demands for reforms in the Congress party during the CWC meeting to be called for discussing the poll debacle, sources told news agency ANI.Senior Congress leaders Manish Tewari and Kapil Sibal met senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad at his residence.
The Congress drew a blank in this series of assembly polls losing all the five states, including Punjab to AAP.The rebel group comprising leaders like Manish Tewari, Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Ghulam Nabi Azad and others had written to the Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi in 2020 demanding sweeping reforms in the Congress, including a full-time party president. “Over-centralisation of the organisation and micro-management has always proven to be counter-productive. The party has witnessed a steady decline reflected in successive electoral verdicts in 2014 and 2019, and the reasons were manifold,” the letter read. Sonia Gandhi had hit back at the rebels, saying that they were free to elect a new president as she didn’t want to take up the responsibilities any further. The 75-year-old leader took up the reins of the party as an interim chief after her son Rahul Gandhi quit as the Congress party’s debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
