Only the Gandhis cannot be held responsible for the Congress’s recent election defeats, party veteran P Chidambaram has said, urging the G-23 ‘group of rebels’ to not split the party.
In a statement made to NDTV a day after G-23 met to call for an institutional rehaul, Chidambaram said Sonia Gandhi had offered to step down along with her children Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee held to analyse the reasons behind the party’s defeat in the recently held assembly polls in five states.
“The Gandhis offered to step down, but it was not accepted by the CWC. So, what is our option now? We need to speed up the process to elect a new Congress president. But the earliest that that can happen is August. But what do we do between now and August? Till then we, including me, believe that Mrs Gandhi is leading the charge,” Chidambaram was quoted in the report as saying.