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Stalin urges Rahul Gandhi not to quit as Congress chief, asks him to rebuild party

DMK President MK Stalin on Thursday urged Congress chief Rahul Gandhi not to resign from his party post. A source close to Stalin confirmed that the DMK chief had telephoned Rahul Gandhi on Thursday afternoon.

“He told him that his campaign did do well and he asked him not to resign. He asked him to build the party in the coming years,” said the source. However, the source added that Rahul Gandhi did not give any commitment to Stalin. The DMK leader also spoke to UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Stalin’s call comes amidst multiple reports that Rahul Gandhi is determined to step down as Congress chief. Rahul had on Monday met senior Congress leaders Ahmed Patel and KC Venugopal and had reportedly told them to find a replacement. According to reports, Rahul had also insisted that the new Congress President should be from outside the Gandhi family, ruling out Sonia and his sister Priyanka as a replacement.

Rahul Gandhi had offered to resign on Saturday at a Congress Working Committee meeting that was called to analyse the party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha Elections. However, the CWC had “unanimously rejected” his offer and had instead urged Rahul to restructure the party and go in for a complete overhaul.

The Congress under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership was able to improve its 2014 Lok Sabha performance – the lowest in its electoral history – by only eight seats, winning 52 seats. This was also on account of its ally the DMK. The Congress in Tamil Nadu had piggybacked on its Dravidian partner, winning eight out of the nine Lok Sabha seats in the state. Incidentally, Stalin was the first to endorse Rahul Gandhi’s candidate for Prime Minister in the run-up to the Parliamentary polls.

Rahul, who had taken over as President in December 2017, suffered an embarrassing defeat in the party’s bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, losing to BJP’s Smriti Irani. The party was also routed in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where it had emerged victorious in December 2018. In Karnataka, where the Congress is in alliance with the JD(S), the ruling combine was wiped out by the BJP, managing to win only one seat each.

Source: The News Minute