Congress G-23 leaders meet at Ghulam Nabi Azad's residence after party's drubbing in five state elections
Mar 11, 2022
New Delhi [India], March 11 : With Congress facing a major drubbing in the assembly polls to five states, leaders of Congress G-23 met at senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad's residence here on Friday to discuss the developments.
The meeting is being held even as Congress has said that party chief Sonia Gandhi will call a meeting of the party's working committee soon.
Congress leaders Manish Tewari, Kapil Sibal and Anand Sharma, Akhilesh Prasad Singh are among those present at the meeting.
Sources said other G-23 members would virtually join the meeting. The G-23 leaders had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi in August 2020 calling for sweeping reforms in the party including direct election at various levels.
Congress had said on Thursday that the results of five states have come against the expectations of the party.
The party had also indicated that the clashing ambitions of its leaders had hurt the party's prospects.
Party leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said there was need to "seriously introspect, re-examine, re-think" whether the race for political positions "is undermining the position of the party to an extent where we end up helping the cause of our opposition and where we end up causing loss to the Congress party".
He said this question needs to be answered "not only in Punjab, not only in Uttarakhand, not only in Goa, but across the country".
Surjewala also talked of anti-incumbency in Punjab, which was ruled by Congress.
"In Punjab, Congress presented a new leadership through Charanjit Singh Channi who is the son of the soil, but the entire anti-incumbency of 4.5 years under Captain Amarinder Singh could not be overcome and hence people voted for AAP for change," he said.
Party leader Shashi Tharoor had on Thursday called for reforming the party's "organisational leadership in a manner that will reignite those ideas and inspire the people". "One thing is clear -- Change is unavoidable if we need to succeed," he said in a tweet.
