Rahul Gandhi Adamant on Resignation, Old Guard Back In Action

NEW DELHI: Days after making his emotional outburst public and adamant over quitting the top post, Congress president Rahul Gandhi is unlikely to recall his resignation even as veterans are deep in ‘chintan’ over the future course of action.

Sources in the party said that Rahul Gandhi has made up his mind and would not consider the repeated pleas of continuing at the helm.

Meanwhile, the old guard is back in action and working on various options to sail through the turbulent times. Among them is appointing 91-year-old Motilal Vora or former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the party's interim president.

Gandhi family loyals -- Ahmed Patel and Motilal Vora -- are learnt to be working directly in conjunction with Sonia Gandhi, former party president and chairperson of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), to prepare the future roadmap.

Party insiders said the interim president would work with a presidium comprising younger party leaders such as Ashok Chavan, Gaurav Gogoi, Deepender Hooda, Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sushmita Dev.

The Congress party is grappling with the massive drubbing in the just-concluded general election. The party could win only 52 seats while Narendra Modi-led BJP trumped all its strategies crossing 300-mark.

Following the election results, the party has been imploding with many State party chiefs offering to resign from their post owning up moral responsibility for the defeat.

The Congress president is learnt to have told leaders at the Congress Working Committee meeting on Saturday that India needs an ideological fight against the BJP and its ideological patron, the RSS, and he “was ready for that” but conveyed that he does not want to be bogged down by matters such as appointments of district Congress chiefs as these were taking a lot of his time.

“I am not running away,” he told the CWC members, according to a party leader.

The CWC meeting was called to discuss the debacle suffered by the party in the Lok Sabha elections - the second since 2014. (IANS)

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