Sonia Gandhi offers to quit as Congress interim president

Congress' interim President Sonia Gandhi today offered to quit and asked the party's top decision-making body to start the process of looking for her replacement following a demand by more than 20 senior leaders for leadership change.

Sonia handed over a note expressing her desire to step down as party chief to the party's senior leader KC Venugopal, sources said.

In the note read out at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in New Delhi, 73-year-old Sonia called for a start of the process to select a new party chief, the sources said.

Sonia's desire to resign as the party's interim chief came with reference to a letter by the senior leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Shashi Tharoor, Anand Sharma and Kapil Sibal, our New Delhi correspondent reports.

The senior leaders went to the extent of questioning the current CWC's ability to guide the party in the fight against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Ironically, at least three of the leaders are part of the CWC -- Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Mukul Wasnik.

The 20 pro-leadership change leaders also said the Congress has failed to conduct an honest introspection of its losses in 2014 and 2019 parliamentary polls and that the uncertainty over leadership has demoralised party workers.

Ahead of today's meeting, several Congress chief ministers led the calls for Sonia to stay on until Rahul Gandhi takes charge.

Almost all Lok Sabha lawmakers of the party have written to Sonia expressing solidarity and urging her to continue in her post or install Rahul Gandhi.

The Congress is clearly divided on the leadership issue with a section demanding collective leadership and another reposing faith in the Gandhi family.

The 20 party leaders wrote to Sonia demanding a full-time, visible president and overhauling of the organisational structure including elections to the CWC and reconstitution of the party's parliamentary board.

This is the second challenge to Sonia Gandhi's leadership after the one in 1999 when the then leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Sharad Pawar had questioned it for her Italian origin in order to keep her from being named the party's prime ministerial face in the general elections that year.

Sonia had resigned from the CWC in 1999 but the party's highest decision-making forum unanimously rejected her move bringing her back as the party president. Sonia then went on to become the longest-serving Congress president and Pawar and rebels quit to form Nationalist Congress Party.