In Post-Poll Purge, Sonia Gandhi Asks Five State Congress Presidents to Resign

After the party’s poor performance in recently concluded five state assembly elections, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) presidents of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa, and Manipur to tender resignations in order to facilitate the reorganization of the state unit’s top post.

The Congress failed to wrest the four BJP-ruled states and lost Punjab to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Uttarakhand Congress Chief Ganesh Godiyal, Goa Congress Chief Girish Chodankar, and Uttar Pradesh Congress Chief Ajay Kumar Lallu have already resigned from the post taking moral responsibility for the defeat. While the resignation letters of Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and Manipur Congress President Nameirakpam Loken Singh are yet to come.

Taking to Twitter, Surjewala said, “Congress President, Smt. Sonia Gandhi has asked the PCC Presidents of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa & Manipur to put in their resignations in order to facilitate the reorganization of PCCs.”

Speaking to ANI, Lallu took the responsibility of the party’s poor performance in Uttar Pradesh and said, “We will follow the orders (to resign from PCC President’s post) of the national president. We take full responsibility for our loss in assembly elections. The meeting was good, Congress will work together for upcoming elections in the country.”

Meanwhile, Godiyal said that he wanted to resign on the day the poll results were announced but was waiting for party high-command’s order.

While Sidhu was appointed to the Punjab PCC chief post only a few months ago, the Uttarakhand unit president of the party Godiyal, and his Manipur counterpart Loken Singh were also appointed before the polls.

This order to resign comes after a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) chaired by Sonia Gandhi was held on Sunday to introspect the Congress’s crushing defeat in five states – Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur. In the almost five-hour-long meeting, the CWC members had urged Sonia Gandhi to continue to lead and initiate changes required to strengthen the party.

In the CWC meeting, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad had raised the demand of fixing the responsibilities.

There is simmering tension within the Congress after the poll disaster and in-party dissenters, called the Group of 23 leaders (G-23), are clearly miffed with the style of functioning of the grand old party leadership.

The most prominent among the G23 leaders, Kapil Sibal, has said that Gandhis should step aside and give some other leader a chance to lead the party. “Leadership is in cuckoo land I want a ‘Sab ki Congress’. Some want a ‘Ghar ki Congress’,” Sibal told the Indian Express in an interview.

Since the poll debacle of 2014, the Congress has lost elections continuously except on a few occasions, he said, and added that “the CWC has reposed faith in the party leadership but those outside the CWC feel otherwise as many have left the party and new leaders should be given a chance to lead the party”.

Sibal, who is not a member of the CWC, is one of the signatories of the letter written to Sonia Gandhi for bringing reforms within the party.

Rahul Gandhi had resigned as Congress chief after the party suffered its second consecutive defeat in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Sonia Gandhi, who took over the reins of the Congress again as interim president, had also offered to quit in August 2020 after strong criticism by a section of leaders, referred to as G-23, but the CWC had urged her to continue.

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