Sonia and Rahul in huddle with top Congress leaders, Prashant Kishor

Election strategist Prashant Kishor was also at Gandhi’s residence at 10, Janpath. It is not known whether he is part of the meeting that Gandhi is having with senior party leaders, including Mallikarjun Kharge, A K Antony, Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh and Ambika Soni. Sources said P Chidambaram and Randeep Surjewala were also supposed to attend the meeting but had not arrived by noon.

There had been much talk in the party about Kishor’s involvement in election strategising. A section of the party wants him to be roped in for the Gujarat poll campaign, but he is said to be insisting on the induction of Naresh Patel, chairman of the Shree Khodaldham Trust which manages the grand temple of Goddess Khodiyar, the patron deity of the Leuva Patidar community near Rajkot.

Some of the party leaders claim Kishor wants Patel to be projected as the party’s face in the Gujarat Assembly elections. While Kishor had, in the past, denied reports that he may join the party, a section of the leaders insist that it is not a closed chapter. Kishor had a series of meetings with the Gandhis last year too but his association with other parties has led a section of the leaders to oppose his entry citing the trust factor.

In fact, Kishor had in December hit out at the Congress arguing that its leadership of the Opposition is not the “divine right of an individual, especially when the party has lost more than 90 per cent elections in the last 10 years”. Let the Opposition leadership be decided “democratically”, he had said.