The election for the post of Congress president will be held on October 17. The vote counting for the Congress party's presidential election will be held on October 19 and the results will be declared on the same day, news agency ANI reported.
The party had earlier announced that the election for the new All India Congress Committee (AICC) president would be held sometime between August 21 and September 20, 2022.
Congress MP KC Venugopal has informed that the nomination process for the post of Congress president will start on September 24 and end on September 30.
He added: “The CWC has resolved to make the ‘Mehangai Par Halla Bol’ rally to be held in Delhi on September 4 and the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ to be launched on September 7 a resounding success.”
Commenting on the upcoming elections, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said: “Anyone can file nomination to contest the Congress president poll; we are the only party to have such a democratic exercise.”
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) -- the party's highest decision-making body -- held on August 28; the Congress party’s interim president Sonia Gandhi and other top leaders had joined in virtually.
The CWC meet comes days after the shock resignation of former Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad who accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of “demolishing the party’s entire consultative mechanism”.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister had on August 26 resigned from all party positions including primary membership of the Congress.
“I have decided to sever my half a century old association with the Indian National Congress and hereby resign from all my positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress,” he said in the letter he addressed to Sonia Gandhi.
Notably, despite serving eight terms in the Rajya Sabha, Azad, who had retired from the Upper House in March, was not renominated to the Upper House by the Congress.