NEW DELHI: The long-pending elections for the post of Congress president will be held on October 17 and the results will be announced on October 19, ANI reported quoting party sources.
The decision was taken at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body, on Sunday.
The meeting comes in the backdrop of the shock resignation of party veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday and his letter to party president Sonia Gandhi in which he lashed out at Rahul Gandhi for “demolishing the party’s entire consultative mechanism”.
The filing of nominations for the October 17 elections will be open between September 24-30.
The Congress had announced in October last year that the election of the new party president will be held between August 21 and September 20 this year.
Several party insiders say Rahul Gandhi is persisting with his stance that he will not be the AICC president.
Rahul Gandhi had resigned as Congress president after the party suffered its second consecutive defeat in parliamentary elections in 2019.
Sonia Gandhi who took over the reins of the party again as interim president had also offered to quit in August 2020 after an open revolt by a section of leaders, referred to as G-23, but the CWC had urged her to continue.
(With inputs from agencies)