Rahul Gandhi alone should become the president of the Congress party and he should not fall into the trap of the ‘conspiracy’ by the G-23 [group of 23 leaders] as any such step might lay to waste all the efforts taken by the party till now, TNCC president K.S. Alagiri said on Monday in Chennai.
Mr. Alagiri claimed in the past three months, he had spoken to at least 2,000 Congress leaders across the country and all of them wanted only Mr. Gandhi as the Congress president. “If that is G-23, this is G-2,000. They all want Rahul Gandhi as party president and accept Sonia Gandhi’s leadership. All this talk of joint leadership by the G-23 is not practical and is opportunistic,” he charged.
The TNCC president said the Congress had not been in power only for the past seven years. “We were in power for 60 years. Will Congress vanish just because it is not in power for seven years? Instead of taking steps and working hard to ensure the Congress takes on the BJP, these leaders are talking like the BJP,” he said.
According to him, the suggestion that Mr. Rahul Gandhi be made floor leader in the Parliament was like a consolation prize. “How is it possible? Can you grow the party without Mr. Rahul Gandhi? Only he has the ability to take on someone like [PM] Modi,” he said adding the TNCC was ready to pass a resolution that Mr. Gandhi should be Congress president.
He said the same leaders in the G-23 were part of all the decision-making in the Congress all these years and suddenly were talking about leadership failure. “They don’t talk about what steps the Congress needs to take to become strong in many States. They just want power and the TNCC condemns it,” he said.
