Sonia Gandhi To Remain Congress President, Party Calls Off Intrim Polls Due To COVID-19

Sonia Gandhi to remain Congress president for three more months: Sonia Gandhi will continue to hold the post of Congress Party president for at least three more months. On Monday, a decision was taken to not hold the organisational polls which were previously set to be held in June, due to the rising cases of the COVID-19. The move was accepted unanimously by the members of the party.

Ashok Gehlot, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan was the first one to demand that the polls were stalled. Following him, general secretaries of the Congress KC Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala too asked to defer the polls for at least two or three months due to the restrictions on physical gathering and movement of people.

People present at the meeting said that the move to defer the poll was not opposed by any of the members of "G-23" who were present at the meeting. This is the group of Indian National Congress leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020, seeking organizational elections and change in the internal working of the political party.

Signatories to the letter included prominent names from the party like Anand Sharma, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mukul Wasnik. All there members were also present at the meeting held on May 10 and supported the decision to defer the polls.

Sonia Gandhi took charge of the Indian National Congress party after her son Rahul Gandhi resigned following the defeat of INC at hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2019 general elections. Rahul Gandhi led INC only managed to win 52 seats of 542, whereas Narendra Modi led BJP secured 303 seats.

In January this year, Gandhi was in news when she called the central government "arrogant" for its handling of the farmers' protest. "There is still time, the Modi government should leave the arrogance of power and immediately withdraw the three black laws unconditionally to end the agitation of the farmers who are dying in the cold and rain," said Gandhi.

She went on to remind the BJP government that democracy means protecting the interests of the people and the farmers-workers. "It seems that ensuring profits for a handful of industrialists has become the main agenda of this government,” claimed Gandhi. Read more on that here.