Congress president’s election postponed due to COVID-19: Report

The Congress, which is being run by an interim president since the 2019 Lok Sabha election defeat, once again deferred organisational elections citing the current COVID-19 pandemic. At the virtual Congress Working Committee meeting held on Monday, a unanimous decision was taken to put off the elections.

“Elections for Congress President further postponed. Due to #COVID19 situation, it has been decided in CWC meet to postpone it as it won’t be correct to hold elections in this scenario. In the last CWC meet, Central Election Authority had proposed 23rd June as the poll date,” reports ANI quoting sources.

Earlier, during the meeting interim president Sonia Gandhi had said that election authority chairperson Madhusudan Mistri had prepared a schedule and that KC Venugopal would read it later.

But, senior leaders like Ashok Gehlot, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma said that there was no need for elections at this time due to the COVID pandemic. The country is in the grip of a rampaging second wave of COVID with daily tally of close to 4 lakh cases and 4000 deaths.

The CWC, the party’s highest decision making body,  was to announce the election in August last year. However, after a charged meeting, the committee asked Sonia Gandhi to continue as interim chief for the next six months.

It was decided that internal polls would by conducted by February. But it February, a decision was taken to push the elections until after the five assembly polls.

In the recently-concluded polls, the Congress lost in West Bengal, Assam and Kerala, failed to retain power in Puducherry and came to power, in partnership with DMK, in Tamil Nadu. 

Rahul Gandhi, who took over as Congress president from Sonia Gandhi in 2017, stepped down after the party was defeated in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In a letter, he suggested that a non-Gandhi should be elected as the president.

Meanwhile, Sonia Gandhi today told the party workers to find out the reasons behind their failure in the recent assembly polls held in Assam, West Bengal and Kerala.

“We need to candidly understand why in Kerala & Assam we failed to dislodge incumbent governments and why in West Bengal we drew a complete blank. These will yield uncomfortable lessons, but if we don’t face up to reality, if we do not look facts in face, we won’t draw right lessons,” she said.