Chintan Shivir: Clamour for Rahul's return as Cong chief

Udaipur: The three-day Chintan Shivir, held here, saw a majority of delegates demanding the appointment of Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president.

Rahul, however, took the position that there was no need to discuss the matter at this juncture since organisational election is approaching in August.

Most of the leaders who spoke at Chintan Shivir (brainstorming camp) except a handful of dissenting Group of 23 (G-23) leaders wanted Rahul Gandhi to take up the responsibility of Congress president.

The G-23 leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Bupinder Singh Hooda and Anand Sharma kept mum on the issue. At the drafting committee meeting on political affairs in which Azad is a member, most of the members supported Rahul's elevation to the president's post.

National Students Union (NSU) secretary Eric Stephen said that Rahul Gandhi has led the party from the front in the last 10 years and there is no point in supporting the BJP's rhetorics against him and then asking for his blood.

According to him, Rahul is the only pan-Indian face the party can project at the national-level.

Eric Stephen wanted complete revamp of the party's media wing to make it equipped to run the campaign against the ruling BJP in a more effective way.

 

'Congress' connect with people broken'
Acknowledging that the Congress' connection with people has been broken, Rahul Gandhi announced on Sunday that the party will undertake a yatra in October to re-establish and strengthen it.

Our fight is for ideology. We have to go to the people and sit with them, the connection the party had with people has to be re-established, he said.

We have decided that the Congress party in October will got to people and take out a yatra and strengthen the relation...with people. This cannot happen with short-cuts, he said.

The Congress has always provided a platform where people can hold deliberations without any fear or worry, he said.