Sonia targets dissenters, rivals at key Cong meeting
NEW DELHI: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Saturday asserted that she is a “full-time and hands-on Congress president”, in a veiled message to party leaders who have questioned a lack of leadership and sought rehaul of the party’s functioning.
In her opening remarks at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on Saturday, Gandhi said the revival of the party can only happen with “unity, self-control, discipline and by keeping the party’s interests paramount”.
“There is no need to speak to me through the media,” she said, targetting the dissenting leaders, dubbed G23, who have aired their criticism of the party publicly since last year.
“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,” she said at the meeting.
Her remarks came after senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal recently said that at the moment, there was no president in the party, so it was not known who was taking decisions.
Ghulam Nabi Azad and Sibal, both members of the Group of 23 leaders, who sought major organisational overhaul last year, had also demanded an early meeting of the CWC to discuss the declining fortunes of the party in the wake of recent defections.
At the meeting, Gandhi also placed on the table the party’s organisational election schedule before the CWC, with people familiar with the matter indicating that the process could be long-drawn and the elections to the post of Congress president will be held in September 2022.
“I am, if you will allow me to say so, a full-time and hands-on Congress president,” Sonia Gandhi asserted.
The 74-year-old leader also pointed out that in the last two years, a large number of Congress leaders, particularly the younger ones, have taken on leadership roles in communicating party policies and programmes to the people.
“Never have we let issues of public importance and concern go unaddressed. You are aware that I have been taking them up with the Prime Minister as have Dr Manmohan Singh and Rahul (Gandhi) ji. I have been interacting with like-minded political parties regularly,” she said and added that the Opposition parties have issued joint statements on national issues and coordinated strategy in Parliament as well.
About the forthcoming assembly elections, the Congress chief said the party’s preparations have already started a while back and asserted that though there were many challenges, “if we are united, disciplined and focus on the party’s interests alone, I am confident that we will do well”.
She also wished Manmohan Singh, who is presently in AIIMS, a full and speedy recovery.
Elaborating on the issues facing the country, the Congress chief noted the CWC is meeting in the background of the continuing agitation by farmers and that it has been over a year since the “three black (farm) laws were bulldozed through Parliament”.
Referring to the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in which four farmers and a journalist were mowed down by a car on October 3, she said the shocking incident shows the mindset of the Bharatiya Janata Party as to how it perceives the farmers’ movement and how it has been dealing with this determined struggle by the farmers to protect their lives and livelihoods.
Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra, who has been named in an FIR, was arrested last Saturday by the Uttar Pradesh Police in connection with the mowing down of four farmers in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri.
In her remarks, Gandhi also alleged that the government’s only answer for economic recovery was selling off national assets and its single-point agenda was “becho, becho, becho (sell, sell, sell)”.
Noting that the government has changed its vaccine procurement policy since the CWC last met in May, she said this has been done in response to the demands of the states and was one of those rare occasions when the states were heard and the country benefitted.
“Even so, cooperative federalism remains only a slogan and the Centre loses no opportunity to put non-BJP states at a disadvantage,” she alleged.
Gandhi also flagged concerns over the sudden spurt in killings in Jammu and Kashmir and said minorities there have been targeted.
“This must be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” she said.
The entire responsibility for bringing the perpetrators of these barbaric crimes to justice is that of the Union government, Gandhi asserted.
Restoring social peace and harmony and confidence amongst the people in J&K rests with the Modi government too, she said.
She also hit out at the government over its foreign policy and said a broad consensus that had been there on it always has been damaged because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “continued reluctance to take the Opposition into confidence in any meaningful manner”.
“Foreign policy has become a diabolical instrument of electoral mobilisation and polarisation,” Gandhi alleged.
“We face serious challenges on our borders and other fronts. The prime minister telling the opposition leaders last year that there had not been any occupation of our territory by China and his silence ever since is costing our nation dearly.” Sonia Gandhi, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Chief Ministers Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan, Bhupesh Baghel of Chhattisgarh and Charanjit Channi of Punjab attended the meeting -- the first such physical meeting of the CWC since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
G23 leaders -- Azad and Anand Sharma -- were among those present at the meeting at the All India Congress Committee headquarters here.