NEW DELHI: Knives were out in the Congress ahead of the presidential elections with party leaders seeking action against colleagues who spoke against the Gandhis and met Ghulam Nabi Azad after his scathing attack on the leadership following his exit.
Former Haryana Congress chief Kumari Selja wrote to AICC state in-charge Vivek Bansal urging him to issue a notice to Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Congress Legislature Party leader in Haryana, on his recent meeting with Azad.
Besides, Virender Vashisht, AICC secretary in the Indian Overseas Congress, wrote to party disciplinary committee head Tariq Anwar seeking action against former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan for making sharp statements against Rahul Gandhi.
Early this week, Hooda, Chavan and Anand Sharma, all three members of the G23 faction, met Azad at the latter’s residence. They discussed the presidential polls, Azad’s public meeting in Jammu on September 4, which coincides with the Congress price rise rally in Delhi, and his plans to form a new party in J&K ahead of the Assembly elections there.
In his resignation letter, Azad alleged that Rahul demolished the consultative mechanism in the party, sidelined all senior leaders, and let a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants to run the party.
The demand for action comes amid demands for transparency in the presidential elections.
Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram have demanded that the electoral rolls be uploaded on the AICC website. But AICC general secretary K C Venugopal rejected the demand, saying “There is no such practice in the Congress.”