'Wait for more action the day after (the Friday meeting).'
The Congress party, which has been in turmoil after its abysmal electoral performance in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, with dissident leaders raising a banner of revolt against the Gandhis after the Congress Working Committee rejected their offer to quit party posts, seems to be on their way to patch up differences over how the party should be run and its revival.
A day after Rahul Gandhi's meeting with former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad is scheduled to meet party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday along with "two other senior leaders" at Gandhi's residence.
Azad and these "two other senior leaders", who are meeting Sonia Gandhi, were part of a group of more than 23 dissident Congress leaders who met at Azad's residence for dinner on the night of March 16, where Kapil Sibal is said to have proposed that Sonia Gandhi should step down as Congress president.
One Congress leader present at the G-23 dinner at Azad's home tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com that Azad and these two leaders will offer Sonia concrete proposals for the party's organisational overhaul and a rough roadmap that would help the Congress become the fulcrum of a national Opposition to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 general election.
"Ghulam Nabi Azadji is meeting Soniaji with two other senior members (of the G-23 group) to discuss some concrete proposals for the Congress's revival," this leader reveals, requesting anonymity.
"We want collective decision-making at all levels in the Congress and a roadmap to discuss negotiations with other parties to forge a national Opposition (to the BJP in the Lok Sabha election)," says Pallath Joseph Kurien, the former deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, who was one of the many new attendees at the G-23 dinner.
When asked if the G-23 leaders discussed the role of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in the party, Kurien says it was not a matter of discussion.
When asked if the Congress could survive without the Gandhis, Kurien replies, "that question is irrelevant."
"Everybody was calling Ghulam Nabi Azadji. When he received scores of calls of anxious Congress leaders he decided that they should meet at his residence to discuss the future course of action," says the afore-quoted leader who did not want to be named in this report.
"So he called all of us to discuss the conversation that took place in the CWC meeting. It was his suggestion that everybody should come for a dinner discussion at his residence," this leader said about how the G-23 meeting at Azad's house materialised.
Earlier, on March 14, the CWC had unanimously rejected the Gandhis's offer to quit all posts after the party's debacle in the assembly elections in five states.
When asked if the G-23 leaders' dinner meeting was kept a secret, the leader says, "Soniaji was in the know that senior Congress leaders were scheduled to meet at Nabiji's home."
He, however, refused to elaborate on the exact agenda of Friday's meeting and about the concrete proposals put forth by the dissidents about revamping the Congress and the party's roadmap for forging a united front of like-minded parties against the BJP.
"Wait for more action the day after (the Friday meeting)," he adds.
Interestingly, one of the many new attendees at the March 16 dinner at Azad's house, struck a polite note and refused to speak or discuss what happened at the G-23 meal.
"All of us in good faith have decided that none of us will speak to the media about the proceedings, this senior Congressman tells Rediff.com. "We don't want to reveal the essence of what we discussed."
