Rahul said 'why letter over leadership sent when Sonia was hospitalised': Reports

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday questioned the timing of the letter written by party leaders to interim chief Sonia Gandhi calling for sweeping changes in the organisation.

The former Congress president said during the crucial meeting of the Congress Working Committee that the letter was sent to the party chief at a time when she had not been keeping well. He said the letter came at a time when the “party is fighting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya and Rajasthan.”

Gandhi was referring to the letter from 23 leaders, including former chief ministers, members of the party’s highest decision-making body the Congress Working Committee and sitting members of Parliament, have suggested far-reaching changes including dissolution of powers to state units and revamping the highest decision-making body.

Before him, his mother Sonia Gandhi asked the CWC to relieve her as the interim chief of the Congress party as former prime minister Manmohan Singh urged her to continue. She asked CWC members to begin deliberations towards the process of transition to relieve her from the duty of party president.

Kapil Sibal, Shashi Tharoor, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Prithviraj Chavan, Vivek Tankha and Anand Sharma were among the leaders who wrote the letter to Gandhi.

Gandhi, in her reply to one of the signatories, expressed her wish to discontinue as the president and asked all the leaders to get together to find a new leader.