Election For Congress President On Oct 17

New Delhi: Election for the post of Congress party’s president will be held on October 17 and counting is to be undertaken on October 19.

According to reports, a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) was underway to decide the schedule of the election for the top party post. Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have joined the meeting virtually.

The meeting comes in the aftermath of the resignation of party veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday and his letter to party Chief Sonia Gandhi in which he lashed out at Rahul Gandhi for “demolishing the party’s entire consultative mechanism”.

Besides giving approval to the polls schedule, the members of the CWC, the party’s highest decision-making body, could also express confidence in the leadership provided by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, sources told PTI.

This would be significant in the context of Azad’s resignation and criticism of the leadership.

Dealing with the fallout of a series of high profile exits, including that of Kapil Sibal and Ashwani Kumar, Congress has attempted to deflect the latest blow by alleging that Azad’s DNA had been “Modi-fied” and linking his resignation to the end of his Rajya Sabha tenure.

The Congress had announced in October 2021 that the election of the new party president will be held between August 21 and September 20 this year.

The CWC had decided that elections for block committees and one member each of state Congress units will be held from April 16 to May 31, district committee chiefs will be elected between June 1 and July 20, state chiefs and AICC members between July 21 and August 20, and AICC president between August 21 and September 20, sources said.