India’s Congress party in turmoil after Gandhi resignation
NEW DELHI, (Reuters) - Rahul Gandhi has spurned appeals to reconsider his resignation as leader of India’s Congress Party after losing a second general election to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an aide said yesterday, as the party faces its worst crisis in a decade.
Stuck between a leader determined to quit and party officials unwilling to accept his leaving, Congress is effectively leaderless more than a month after its election drubbing and facing key state polls later this year.
Chief ministers from five Congress-ruled states went to New Delhi on Monday where they spent two hours trying to convince Gandhi to reverse his May 25 decision to resign.
“We told him our point of view, openly, in a long conversation,” Ashok Gehlot, a senior Congress leader and chief minister of western Rajasthan state, told reporters.
“We hope he will consider our view and take the right decision,” he said.
A close aide to Gandhi, speaking to Reuters after the meeting, said the 49-year-old was firm about stepping aside as Congress president, a position he held since succeeding his mother, Sonia Gandhi, in late 2017.
“He will never change his mind,” the aide said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
“He feels that the way forward is not him continuing as Congress president ... and let somebody outside the Gandhi family be Congress president,” the aide said, adding the party cannot “just depend on one person, one family”.