Sonia Gandhi elected CPP chief: Sonia Gandhi was on Saturday re-elected as Congress Parliamentary Party chief. The decision was taken during a brief meeting of the newly elected Congress MPs at the Central Hall of Parliament. “We thank the 12.13 crore voters for reposing faith in the Congress Party,” Sonia said after the party lawmakers unanimously decided to elect her to lead them in Lok Sabha.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi was also present during the meeting. This was his first official meeting after he attended May 25 meeting of the party’s working committee during which he offered to resign following the drubbing the party witnessed in the just concluded Lok Sabha election 2019.
Also Read: Murmurs of discontent against Rahul Gandhi as Congress suffers back-to-back Lok Sabha defeats
The Congress Working Committee has already rejected Rahul Gandhi’s decision to step down. It also unanimously passed a resolution authorising him to bring structural changes in the party at all levels in a bid to revamp it.
However, Rahul has remained adamant on his decision of stepping down from the top party post. Rahul Gandhi has reportedly told senior party leaders Ahmed Patel and K C Venugopal that the organisation should elect a non-Gandhi as the president.
Smt. Sonia Gandhi elected as the leader of Congress Parliamentary Party!
She says, ‘we thank the 12.13 Cr voters for reposing faith in the Congress Party’. pic.twitter.com/H4z9i3dN8B
— Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) June 1, 2019
The Congress suffered a humiliating loss in the Lok Sabha election 2019 as it could manage to win just 52 seats, three short of what is needed to get the Leader of Opposition post in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament.
Rahul Gandhi himself lost the Congress bastion seat of Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani by over 55,000 votes. He, however, won from Wayanad in Kerala.
