Senior Congress leader Harish Rawat on Sunday asserted that there is no rift between the old and young leaders in the party and "respecting" the views of the "dissenting" leaders, the process to elect their next president has been started.
Talking to on the sidelines of a meeting between Congress leaders and interim president Sonia Gandhi, Rawat said two solutions came out in yesterday's meeting. "There were rumours that senior leaders are dissenters and are being called G23. This is just a media creation. The leadership has cleared that they are part of our family, and whatever they have said is within our internal democracy and we respect that."
"According to their suggestions, few committees have been formed and the process to elect the next party president has been started. There is no old versus young," Rawat said.
Congress General Secretary Rawat added that there was a rumor that former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his close associates were not giving respect to the suggestions by the senior leaders.
"Rahul Gandhi is not against the senior party leaders and has respect for them. Rahul Gandhi respects them for not just their experience but because they had worked with his father Rajiv," he said.
Rawat said that the current meeting is not the first. "We have been meeting virtually. There have been meetings among the state and central leadership."
"This time Sonia Gandhi said she wanted to meet all the leaders personally. All the leaders were there and everyone openly put their points in front of Sonia Gandhi. There is one conclusion. The country needs the Congress, and we need to strengthen ourselves and our responsibility under the leadership of Gandhis," Rawat said.
This was the first meeting when Sonia met the party leaders face-to-face since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the dissenters, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Shashi Tharoor, Prithviraj Chavan and Msh Tewari attended the meeting.
( With inputs from ANI )
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