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'Rahul Gandhi is preferred choice...': Shashi Tharoor after Cong' Chintan Shivir
Tharoor, a Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, also described Congress' Chintan Shivir - a three-day brainstorming session held in Rajasthan this month after another round of underwhelming election results - as an exercise in reform and revival.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said Wednesday that Rahul Gandhi remains the preferred choice of party workers for the post of president - a post held by his mother, Sonia Gandhi, since Rahul stepped down in 2019 after the GOP's poor performance in national elections. Sonia Gandhi has been interim chief for the past three years with the party yet to take a call on her successor.
Tharoor, a Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, also described Congress' Chintan Shivir - a three-day brainstorming session held in Rajasthan this month after another round of underwhelming election results - as an exercise in reform and revival.
"(It) remains to be seen whether it will end up where 'many of us' had wanted… (the) proof of pudding is in (the) eating," he told news agency PTI.
Tharoor - among the group of 23 leaders, or G23, who in 2020 wrote to Sonia Gandhi urging for a complete structural overhaul of the party - said the reformists wanted a consultative process and that its purpose would be served if these discussions took place in the proposed advisory council.
After the Chintan Shivir, which concluded May 15, Sonia Gandhi announced the setting up of a task force to implement proposed reforms and an advisory committee to be headed by her and consisting of members from the Congress Working Committee (CWC, the party's highest decision-making body) to deliberate on political issues.
She made it clear, though, that it will not be a collective decision-making body.
"We will overcome. That is our determination. That is our 'Nav Sankalp' (new resolution). The Congress will have a new 'uday' (dawn)," Sonia Gandhi, 75 years old and the longest-serving party president, had said.
Shashi Tharoor's statements come amid spotlight on the Congress' relevance in the Indian political landscape and its position as the country's most significant opposition outfit.
The Congress suffered humiliating poll defeat in February-March elections; the party was routed by the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab and the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa.
The G23 has, time and again, urged the party leadership to agree to wide-ranging reforms - particularly with the 2024 general election drawing closer.
Tharoor's statements today also came as Gujarat Congress working president Hardik Patel quit - he ripped into the party in his resignation letter - delivering a massive blow ahead of elections in prime minister Narendra Modi's home state.
