Crucial CWC meeting underway, will fix schedule to elect party president

PTI, Jan 22, 2021, 11:28 AM IST

New Delhi: A crucial meeting of the Congress Working Committee to deliberate on the way forward to elect the new party chief began on Friday.

The virtual meeting started with the address of party chief Sonia Gandhi.

“CWC meeting begins. Congress President, Smt. Sonia Gandhi addresses the CWC,” party chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said on Twitter.

Members of the CWC, the party’s top decision-making body, will discuss and finalise the schedule for organisational elections and the AICC plenary session.

This follows a report by the Central Election Authority chaired by Madhusudan Mistry making certain recommendations on the election to the Congress president’s post.

The party’s top leadership is also likely to discuss the current political situation in the wake of the farmers’ agitation and the party’s strategy ahead of the Budget session of Parliament on issues including the WhatsApp chat leaks of Arnab Goswami.

The purported chats widely reported in media mentioned that Goswami was privy to information about the Balakot air strike.

Sonia Gandhi took over as interim Congress president in August 2019 after Rahul Gandhi resigned in the wake of the party’s Lok Sabha debacle in May 2019.

There have been demands from a section of the Congress leaders for having a full-time and active party president and an organisational overhaul.

The CWC had in its earlier meeting decided to hold organisational elections, following a storm in the party in August last year over a letter to Sonia Gandhi by a group of 23 leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Hooda, Prithviraj Chavan, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Mukul Wasnik raising these issues.

Sonia Gandhi had last month met some of these ”letter-writers” and discussed the issues raised by them.