Ghulam Nabi Azad shares suggestions to strengthen Congress party with Sonia Gandhi
Mar 18, 2022
New Delhi [India], March 18 : Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday met with party president Sonia Gandhi here and said he has shared suggestions discussed in the dissident G-23 group meeting on strengthening the party, which had a dismal showing in the recently concluded Assembly polls in five states.
"The meeting with Sonia Gandhi was good. All members of the Congress party decided unanimously that she should continue as the president, nobody said that Sonia Gandhi should quit, we just had some suggestions that were shared," Azad told media persons after the meeting at 10 Janpath, the residence of Sonia Gandhi.
"The discussion was held to fight unitedly in the forthcoming Assembly elections to defeat the opposition parties," he said.
Azad said that in the Congress Working Committee meeting recently, suggestions were sought on how to strengthen the organization.
On Wednesday the leaders of the G-23, which has been calling for sweeping reforms in the Congress met at Azad's residence to discuss the party's performance in the recently concluded Assembly elections in five states - Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur and Goa.
Party leaders Kapil Sibal, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor, Mani Shankar Aiyar, PJ Kurien, Preneet Kaur, Sandeep Dikshit and Raj Babbar were among those present.
The G-23 group has been a vocal critic of Congress leadership, demanding an organizational overhaul after its members wrote a joint letter to Gandhi in 2020.
The results of five assembly polls came as a shock to the Congress which was hoping to do well to revive its prospects for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and to fend off the emerging challenge from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress to replace it as the fulcrum of anti-BJP politics in the country.
The party is slated to elect a new party chief later this year at the culmination of organizational elections.
