Headless Cong: MPs to seek Sonia Gandhi help to tide over crisis

New Delhi: Their party rudderless for nearly two months now and Assembly polls to three states looming, a section of young Congress MPs are thinking of approaching the party high command to request them to quickly put in place someone to head the party.

The MPs might request former Congress president Sonia Gandhi as early as Tuesday morning to make some interim arrangement. Though the Lok Sabha MPs meet every morning to discuss the floor strategy for the day, it is only on Tuesdays when Mrs Gandhi, who is the Congress Parliamentary Party leader, attends the meeting. Rahul Gandhi is also known to have attended the meeting a few times.

The MPs include leaders who were groomed by Mr Gandhi himself and have managed to win polls from their respective Lok Sabha seats. “We want that somebody should take over as party president. This uncertainty is not good for the party. We have three Assembly polls coming up,” one of the young MPs told this newspaper.

The MPs feel that anybody ranging from “Manmohan Singh to Sushilkumar Shinde” was acceptable to them as long as the party gets a chief through whom decisions can be routed.

Sources added that the Congress Working Committee, which was scheduled to be held after July 22, will now take place only after the Karnataka crisis is solved and a consensus is formed on the name.

Since Mr Gandhi’s resignation at the Congress Working Committee meeting on May 25, the Congress has been looking for a replacement with senior leadership having met to explore an alternative. However, no consensus candidate has been found and the process has been left hanging due to the Karnataka crisis.

Though both Mrs Gandhi and Mr Gandhi have ruled out any Gandhi occupying the top post, Priyanka Gandhi’s foray into the Sonbhadra issue has given hopes to many.