india

Updated: Jul 09, 2019 15:13 IST

Rahul Gandhi is technically still Congress president, he should form a committee for suggesting name of his successor, party veteran Janardan Dwivedi said on Tuesday, a day after another senior leader Karan Singh said he was ‘aghast’ at the disorientation into which the party had fallen after Gandhi’s resignation on May 25.

“Some constitutional mechanism should have been constituted by the party president under which opinion of members of working committee should have been taken,” said 73-year-old Dwivedi, who was dropped from the CWC in a reshuffle in July last year.

Rahul Gandhi put in his papers soon after the party’s dismal performance in the Lok Sabha election results, taking responsibility for the poor show. This was followed entreaties by party leaders to Gandhi asking him to reconsider his decision but the 49-year-old leader has not relented.

In a reiteration of his resolve to resign, Gandhi on July 3 wrote a farewell note to his partymen saying the party’s working committee should meet immediately to decide on his successor.

“Many of my colleagues suggested that I nominate the next Congress President. While it is important for someone new to lead our party, it would not be correct for me to select that person,” Gandhi wrote in his four-page letter.

Dwivedi’s comments come a day after former Union minister Karan Singh, 88, called for an urgent meeting of Congress’s highest decision-making body under former PM Manmohan Singh’s chairmanship to take “necessary decisions” in view of Rahul Gandhi’s resignation as the party chief.

“Instead of honouring his bold decision a month was wasted pleading him to take back his resignation which, as a man of honour and integrity, he should not have been pressurised to do,” he said in a statement. He said there is still no alternative structure in place. Karan Singh said the longer the present uncertainty remains, the more Congress workers and voters will be demoralised.