Despite the Hullabaloo, No Concrete Outcome of CWC Meet

Despite the hullabaloo, there was no concrete outcome of the CWC meet as Sonia Gandhi remains interim president.

The Quint’s Sanjay Pugalia analyses the CWC meeting.

(Photo: The Quint)

Video Editor: Vishal Kumar

Although there was a lot of commotion before and during the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, no such earth-shattering decisions were taken in the seven-hour long meeting which got off to a dramatic start.

The CWC unanimously rejected Sonia Gandhi’s offer to resign and urged her to continue as the party's interim head until an All India Congress Committee session is convened.

And the letter written by 23 top Congress leaders to her, complaining about the state of affairs in the party, was sidelined, as the loyalty of these leaders were brought into question right at the start of the meeting. The leaders were outnumbered.

But, throughout the meeting, only two types of opinions echoed when it came to who should lead the party – it was either Sonia or Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul had alleged that the letter was written at the “wrong time”, referring to when Sonia was admitted in the hospital. After which, it was reported that he had accused the leaders of ‘colluding with the BJP’, to which Kapil Sibal had tweeted and later retracted his comments on Rahul.

This is a clear example of mishandling.

The 23 leaders, which included Ghulam Nabi Azad and Shashi Tharoor, simply wanted their issues to be addressed, despite knowing that they would be outnumbered.

The leaders felt that they were treated badly and were looking for more clarity from the party, especially about their plan of action and the direction in which it is heading.

However, there was no response to the letter and the chain of events did seem very ‘stage-managed’

There is a theory, that Rahul would eventually return as the Congress president, which leaves many outsiders to wonder how the party functions.

The party that we see on the outside will always be family-led and it will be futile to expect it to transform.