Change seekers ask for Congress Working Committee meet; Azad writes to Sonia Gandhi

After the Congress leadership made a spectacle of itself in poll-bound Punjab, the group of change seekers has asked interim party president Sonia Gandhi to call a meeting of the Congress Working Committee. The group said the CWC must discuss the party’s sorry state of affairs, especially in poll-bound states. They also sought to know who was responsible for taking bewildering decisions as the party did not have a president for over two years now.Senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad is learnt to have written to Gandhi in his personal capacity, as a CWC member and as a representative of change seekers, demanding a CWC meeting. Azad is learnt to have made three specific demands to Gandhi, besides a reminder that issues, concerns and demands raised in last year’s joint letter remained unaddressed.Gandhi should call a meeting of only regular or full-fledged CWC members (about 25), not an extended CWC meet, the letter said. This is seen as a move to prevent Rahul Gandhi from initiating his customary ploy of getting all CWC invitees and ex-officio members to attend the meeting, making them his cheerleaders, often working to muffle divergent views.

Azad is learnt to have sought a discussion in the CWC about the current state of the Congress, particularly in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur, and with specific pointers to the crisis in Punjab and Goa, party insiders said. The senior J&K leader also wanted the CWC to discuss the issue of unprecedented exodus of senior Congress leaders across India. Azad’s letter followed a discussion among many change seekers at Kapil Sibal’s residence in New Delhi. Later Sibal held a press conference on behalf of all change seekers and raised many pertinent issues, even while asserting he and his colleagues were committed Congress persons conscious of the need to strengthen the party to fight the Modi regime and BJP’s policies.”I’m speaking on behalf of those Congressmen who wrote the letter in August last year and are still waiting for actions to be taken by our leadership in respect of the election to the office of the president, to CWC and central election committee. In our party, there is no president. So, we don’t know who is taking these decisions. We know and yet we don’t know,” Sibal said.It is no secret Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra have been taking key decisions which have boomeranged, with the indulgence of Sonia Gandhi and endorsement of a group of nominated AICC functionaries. Sibal also said it was time to stop nominating party functionaries, including PCC and DCC leaders and reintroduce organisational elections, CWC downwards. Raising a caution on Punjab, Sibal said: “A border state where this is happening to the Congress party means what? It is an advantage to ISI and Pakistan. We know the history of Punjab and the rise of extremism there… Congress should ensure that they remain united.” He said the leadership should realise that the change seekers were not sycophants. “It is very clear. We are G-23, not Ji Huzoor 23.” Later, a group of people claiming to be Youth Congress supporters staged a demonstration outside Sibal’s residence and raised slogans against him.