Dissenters firm on need to discuss reforms in Congress

NEW DELHI: The group of dissenters who wrote to Congress president Sonia Gandhi seeking reforms in the party remain committed to seeking a discussion on issues that they said the Congress Working Committee chose not to take up.
The view in the camp is that the Congress brass saw the letter itself as an act of disloyalty and refused any consideration of its contents. The letter needed to be placed before the CWC for a thorough discussion, they said.
A leader in the group of 23 members who signed the letter said it had clearly spelt out the need for collective discussion with reference to the Congress constitution and set out the utility of an elected CWC and a parliamentary board. The stonewalling of their demands only meant that the party leadership was not looking beyond retaining all the levers of power.
The phone calls to leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were seen as an outreach and a bid to cool tempers and hurt feelings. But a couple of members in the dissenting group said the changes in the AICC that have been hinted at needed to reflect a change of direction.
The G-23 leaders continued to insist that their letter was not disparaging of the Gandhi family and pointed to the urgency for a leader who was fully active and visible. “Sonia Gandhi herself does not want to continue. So, surely a replacement is needed,” said one of them.