This is Ghulam Nabi Azad's first major assignment since the letter controversy.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday appointed G-23 leader Ghulam Nabi Azad as the chairman of the party's Covid task force.
This is Ghulam Nabi Azad's first major assignment since the letter controversy.
The letter from the Congress party.
Given top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's relentless attack on the Narendra Modi government, this task force assumes immense significance in the party. This is the first major responsibility that has been given to Ghulam Nabi Azad since the G-23 leaders wrote a letter last year demanding free and fair organisational election in the Congress.
The Congress's decision to constitute the Covid task force under Ghulam Nabi Azad followed another postponement of the Congress presidential election. Ghulam Nabi Azad incidentally last week supported the decision to postpone the election to the Congress president's post.
The other members of the Congress Covid task force include Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Mukul Wasnik and KC Venugopal.
G-23 that includes senior Congress leaders such as Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari among others had caused much discomfort to the party's first family and its loyalists in 2020. They demanded an overhaul of the Congress's internal system and an open election for the party's president's post.
Congress has been delaying the election for the president's post with critics dubbing it as a tactic to give Rahul Gandhi “more time” to make up his mind for the role again.
Rahul Gandhi had resigned as the Congress president after the second consecutive debacle in the Lok Sabha polls in 2019. Sonia Gandhi was appointed as the interim president till a permanent party president was elected. Her tenure as interim Congress president was later extended as the party repeatedly deferred the presidential poll. Sonia Gandhi has continued in that role despite health concerns that kept her away from election campaigns in key states including Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala.
Ghulam Nabi Azad-led G-23 blamed the Congress leadership for the continued organisational weakness of the party evident in electoral losses in state after state and parliamentary polls. The Congress has been under the tight leash of the Gandhis for decades. The G-23 dissenters sought fresh and fair internal elections to strengthen the Congress's organisational structure.
The group had emerged within the Congress in the backdrop of Lok Sabha election defeat and loss of power in Madhya Pradesh, where it had formed a government defeating the BJP in 2018 assembly polls, and infighting in Rajasthan. Courtesy: www.indiatoday.com
