After being incommunicado for a day, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday held a series of meetings with party leaders including his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot amid his insistence on quitting and also rumblings of discontent in the northern state.
Pilot met Gandhi at his residence followed by Gehlot. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi was present during the discussions, party insiders said.
The party's chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala and general secretary KC Venugopal also met the party president at his Tughlaq Lane home. It is not immediately known what transpired at the meetings.
All senior leaders since Saturday have been trying to convince Rahul Gandhi to take back his resignation, but he seems to be adamant about going ahead with his decision to step down as party president.
Faced with a colossal electoral defeat, the Congress has been riven by internal turmoil. As the party grapples with a severe existential crisis, its governments in both Karnataka and Rajasthan teeter on the brink with reports suggesting the BJP may try to wrest power in both states.
The Congress failed to win a single Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan despite a winning the assembly elections there just months back as the NDA won all 25 Lok Sabha seats.
In Karnataka, where it formed a government with the JD(S) in May last year, the Congress managed to win only one Lok Sabha seat out of 28.
On Monday, Rahul Gandhi cancelled all his appointments for the day and Gehlot could not meet him.
After Rahul Gandhi gave Gehlot a tongue lashing for putting his son above the party at a CWC meeting on Saturday, two days after the Lok Sabha votes were counted, several Rajasthan ministers and MLAs are demanding that accountability be fixed and action taken for the Lok Sabha poll debacle.
According to some leaders who attended the Congress Working Committee meeting, Gandhi did a lot of "plain-speaking" in his surgical analysis of the role of several party leaders while himself offering to quit as the party president.
Ticking-off Gehlot for camping in Jodhpur for his son Vaibhav's election, Gandhi said the chief minister spent days campaigning extensively for his son in Jodhpur and neglected the rest of the state.
The CWC meeting was held in the backdrop of the Congress winning just 52 Lok Sabha seats and drawing a nought in 18 states and Union Territories. Gandhi himself lost from the family bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, though he won from Wayanad in Kerala.
Two more Rajasthan Congress leaders air disappointment over poll results despite party advisory
Two more leaders voiced their disappointment despite an advisory from the party against making public statements. Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee secretary Sushil Asopa said the state unit chief Sachin Pilot should have been made chief minister instead of Ashok Gehlot.
Jaipur former mayor Jyoti Khandelwal, who was also the Congress candidate in the Lok Sabha polls, blamed poor booth management for her own defeat and sought a detailed analysis.
Earlier, Rajasthan ministers Udai Lal Anjana and Ramesh Meena had also demanded introspection and a detailed analysis of the defeat. Agriculture minister Lalchand Kataria on Sunday announced his resignation from the state cabinet.
A purported press release, circulated on social media, said he was resigning over the poor performance by the party in the elections.
But there has been no confirmation on this by the Chief Minister's Office or the Raj Bhawan, and the minister has been unreachable.
Ashok Gehlot faces accusation that he concentrated on his son Vaibhav Gehlot's Jodhpur constituency, neglecting others.
AICC general secretary in charge of Rajasthan, Avinash Pande, has advised party workers against airing their views in public.
Congress leaders from South request Rahul to continue
Several senior leaders of the party, mainly from the South where the Congress did reasonably well except in Karnataka, have asked Mr Gandhi to continue. Senior party leader M Veerappa Moily on Tuesday termed the Lok Sabha election setback for the grand old party as a "passing phase" and backed the continuation of Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president.
Describing Gandhi as the "inspiration" for the party, Moily said it was not appropriate for him to quit as the Congress chief.
"Just because (Narendra) Modi has won...that is not a criteria to leave the presidentship. After all, ups and downs are common for the Congress party. We have seen them many a time," he told PTI.
Shashi Tharoor, who scored an electoral hat-trick by winning from the Thiruvananthapuram seat in the Lok Sabha polls, said Rahul Gandhi is the best person to pull the Congress out of its predicament following the setback.
The Congress has no time to sit and lick its wounds as it must immediately pick itself up for the upcoming state elections, Tharoor told PTI.
He also said he is ready to take on the job of the Congress' leader in the Lok Sabha if offered the post.
(With PTI inputs)
