Political News: I’m a full-time and hands-on Congress president, says Sonia Gandhi at CWC Meet

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Saturday announced that the next party president will be elected only by September next year but stressed that interim party chief Sonia Gandhi will continue as the “full-time and hands on Congress president” till then. The party highlighted upcoming assembly polls as its immediate focus.

Sonia Gandhi called herself, and AICC briefing later termed her, full-time president – in a bid to tide over internal and external criticisms as well as to guard against potential legal and constitutional pitfalls of a never-ending ad hoc arrangement – without clarifying how this technical transformation happened overnight.

The CWC meeting also saw an overwhelming majority of its members making a chorus for Rahul Gandhi’s return as party president, both as a show of loyalty to the family and projecting him as their sole heir apparent.

Changing her interim chief status, Sonia Gandhi told CWC, “I am, if you will allow me to say so, a full-time and hands on Congress President….” In an apparent disapproval of some change-seekers airing their issues through media, she said, “I have always appreciated frankness. There is no need to speak to me through the media. So let us all have a free and honest discussion. But what should get communicated outside the four walls of this room is the collective decision of the CWC.”

After the CWC meeting and AICC briefing, confronting media queries on how Sonia Gandhi, who was made an interim president by CWC in 2019, is now called a full-time president and how Rahul Gandhi continues to take decisions, AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal shot back: “We know how to run the party and we will take decisions. Entire Congress people of the country are unanimously thinking that Rahul Gandhi is a very important and capable leader of the Congress party. One more thing I will tell you: every single decision as far as the Congress party is concerned is taken by Congress president Sonia Gandhi herself. She is competent, and capable and nobody can question her leadership.”

Fixing the Congress presidential elections in September 2022 signals that the new chief would be elected for a full five-year term as Rahul Gandhi was last elected party chief in 2017 .