Rahul not yielding on resignation offer

New Delhi (India), May 27 : Two days after his resignation offer, Congress President Rahul Gandhi is said to be sticking to his decision and is keen that a new person could be chosen for the post to guide it in the challenging times ahead.

Gandhi had offered to step down from his post at the CWC meeting on Saturday taking moral responsibility for the dismal performance in the polls. But it was unmously rejected by the CWC.

Sources said that despite senior leaders making serious attempts to convince him to rethink on his decision, Gandhi is said to be unfazed.

Earlier in the day, he offered tributes to India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru at Shanti Van on the occasion of his death anniversary. When some Congress leaders urged him there to continue as the president, he just smiled and went away.

Party Treasurer Ahmed Patel and Orgsational General Secretary K C Venugopal met with Gandhi at his residence here and urged him to continue to lead the party.

Party leaders, sources said, maintained that Congress cannot afford to have a new leader at the helm for rebuilding the orgsation at this juncture and that the responsibility for the defeat is collective and not individual.

A CWC member said that an honest postmortem is the need of the hour.

However, Congress has termed the developments as speculation and rumour.

"The Congress party expects everyone including the media to respect the sanctity of a closed-door meeting of the CWC. Various conjectures, speculations, insinuations, assumptions, gossip and rumour mongering in a section of the media is uncalled for and unwarranted," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said on Twitter.

( With inputs from ANI )