New Delhi: Sonia Gandhi’s deft handling of the presidential polls appears to have neutralised the G23 majors with the consensus arrived at the candidature of Mallikarjun Kharge who is the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha. The G23— the group of senior dissenters had urged the incumbent Congress chief in 2020 to hold internal party elections for all posts.
“The issue that we had put up before Sonia ji as a demand is being addressed. Kharge is an experienced leader and we all are supporting him,” former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda told ETV Bharat.
Hooda, along with other key G23 members, Anand Sharma, Prithviraj Chavan and Manish Tewari had written a letter to interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi in August 2020 demanding that internal polls for all party posts be held at the earliest so that the party could get a full-time visible president to deal with the future challenges.
The exercise was then planned in 2021 but could not be held due to the pandemic. The schedule for internal polls was finalized last year in October and the party would have got a new president in September but the poll process was shifted to October.
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According to party insiders, the G23 members Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor had tried to build up pressure by demanding that the list of over 9,000 PCC delegates who vote in the presidential polls be published before the nominations.
After the party had rejected their demand, the G23 was actively considering fielding a nominee from its side. That happened when Shashi Tharoor made his intentions to contest the presidential polls clear. The G23 became active once again after Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot withdrew from the race and Digvijay Singh joined the fray on Sep 29. Sharma, Tewari and Chavan reviewed the developments together to firm up a strategy.
According to sources, efforts were on to convince Manish Tewari to contest against Tharoor and Digvijay but the Lok Sabha MP form Punjab politely refused to be the bait saying it was too late to launch a campaign. It is learnt Hooda efforts to persuade to enter the fray did not fructify.
On Friday morning, as the air cleared over the name of Kharge and Digvijay announced his withdrawal in favour of the Karnataka leader, the major lot from the G23 sensed the mood in the party and decided to join the bandwagon.
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Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari and Prithviraj Chavan reached the AICC headquarters to express solidarity with Kharge, who had the blessings of Sonia Gandhi, and happily became his proposers. Ghulam Nabi Azad, who had led the G23 since 2020, has already left the party and is now pursuing his political ambitions in his home state Jammu and Kashmir, with some help from the BJP.
When asked about the G23, Tharoor said the group never existed formally and its members never actually met together at one place. According to Tharoor, the 23 members had signed a letter drafted by some senior leaders over reforms in the party as it was not possible to gather at one place due to Covid related restrictions. “In fact, there were around 100 leaders who had shared the views expressed in the letter. However, only 23 could sign it,” said Tharoor.
With major key G23 members siding with Kharge, the contest is seemingly loaded against Tharoor. The Thiruvananthapuram MP would probably realise where he stands in the Congress system on October 19, when results for the presidential polls would be out.
"The G23 had been talking about the need for internal polls. That issue has been addressed and would be over in a few weeks when the Congress would have a new, elected president," a senior AICC functionary said on condition of anonymity.
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