The dissenting leaders in the Congress held a flurry of meetings on Thursday to deliberate on steps that they feel are required to bolster the party, in the wake of its rout in the recent Assembly elections. Ghulam Nabi Azad, a prominent G-23 leader, is likely to meet party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday to present the final proposals of the group members before the high command.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday met former Haryana chief minister and one of the rebel members Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Delhi in an apparent attempt to reach out to the G-23 grouping. Rahul, along with his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, has been facing intense criticism over party's drubbing as they were at the forefront of the campaign in the state elections.
Rahul and Hooda were learnt to have discussed a revamp of the party organisation, a key demand of the dissenters. Gandhi, a former Congress president, had called Hooda for a discussion on the political situation in Haryana. However, the discussion spilled over to the party's abysmal performance in the elections.
Hooda later met Azad to discuss the outcome of his meeting with Rahul. Later in the evening, some of the the G-23 leaders, including Kapil Sibal and Anand Sharma, met again at Azad's residence to discuss their strategy.
Sibal, in his latest salvo targeting the leadership, had said on Tuesday that the Gandhis should step aside and give some other leader a chance to helm the party, provoking a backlash from Gandhi family loyalists who accused him of speaking the language of the BJP and the RSS.
Though a few Congress leaders have demanded disciplinary action against Sibal, Hooda has reportedly conveyed to Rahul Gandhi that such a step will be unacceptable to the grouping as the dissident leader had only spoken about strengthening the Congress.
Reports said Azad, during his meeting with Sonia Gandhi on Friday, will convey to the leadership that the grouping's only interest is to strengthen the organisation in order to "save the idea of India" which only a strong Congress can do so, and not to split the party.
The Congress leadership is also keen to resolve the differences with the G-23 and has deputed some senior leaders for parleys with the dissenting group, reported PTI, quoting sources.
The party fared poorly in the just-concluded assembly elections by failing to win back any of the BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur and losing Punjab to the AAP.
