Leader and daughter of interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi has reportedly expressed her desire for a non-Gandhi chief of India’s oldest national political party, the Indian National Congress (INC). Priyanka has been quoted as saying that her brother and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi also believes the same.
Pradeep Chhibber and Harsh Shah’s book India Tomorrow: Conversations with the Next Generation of Political Leaders quotes her as saying, “Perhaps not in the [resignation] letter but elsewhere, he has said that none of us should be the president of the party and I am in full agreement with him. I think that the party should find its own path also.” The book was published on August 13.”
Insisting she is ready to take orders from a non-Gandhi chief, she added, “If he [party president] tells me tomorrow that he doesn’t want me in Uttar Pradesh but wants me to be in Andaman and Nicobar, then I would jolly well go to Andaman and Nicobar.”
Rahul had resigned as Congress party president in July last year, taking upon himself the responsibility for the party’s Lok Sabha election debacle when the Congress managed to win only 52 of 543 parliamentary seats.
Later, suspended Congress leader Sanjay Jha claimed that at least 100 letters have been written to Sonia, calling for a change in political leadership. Party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, however, labelled it as a “misinformation campaign” engineered by the Bharatiya Janata Party and said no such letter was written by any member of the Congress.