Rahul Gandhi to file nomination for Congress chief today; party heavyweights to be present

Pic courtesy: @OfficeOfRG

New Delhi: A host of party heavyweights will be present when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi files his nomination for the party chief's post at its headquarters on Monday.

Six Chief Ministers - Punjab's Amarinder Singh, Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Virbhadra Singh, Puducherry's V Narayanasamy, Meghalaya's Mukul Sangma and Mizoram's Lal Thanhawla - are expected to be present when over 90 sets of nomination papers are likely to be filed by various leaders to extend support to Rahul's candidature.

Congress state unit chiefs, senior leaders and Pradesh Congress Committee delegates will be present at the party's central office to express support to him.

The Congress vice president is likely to reach the party headquarters around 10.30 am to file his nomination.

He will sign sets of nomination papers to be filed before the Returning Officer. 

Mullappally Ramachandran, the Returning Officer for the organisational election, told IANS  that 90 nomination forms were taken by different states though not one has been submitted so far. 

The process of nominations started on Friday. The last date for filing nominations is December 4. 

On Sunday, many senior Congress leaders, its members of Parliament and PCC chiefs arrived at the party headquarters to sign the papers, including Sachin Pilot, Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Shukla, PC Chacko, Shobha Oza, Hamdulla Sayeed and others.

Apart from states and union territories, senior leaders on the Congress Working Committee (CWC), including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel and Ghulam Nabi Azad are likely to submit different sets of nomination papers. 

Rahul Gandhi became the Congress vice president in January 2013. 

Meanwhile, endorsing Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla`s allegation about the party`s presidential election being rigged, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Sunday called out the rival party for the lack of "internal democracy" within.

"A youngster Shehzad has exposed the rigging that is taking place in the Congress president poll. And Shehzad is a senior Congress leader in Maharashtra. The Congress Party has tried to muzzle his voice and wants to even remove him from their social media groups. What tolerance is this," the PM had said, addressing a rally in Gujarat's Surendranagar, ANI reported.

PM had Modi further dubbed the discord thus exposed within the Congress Party as indicative of its ineffectuality to govern a nation.

"Those who have no internal democracy can`t work for people. I want to say to this youngster Shehzad - `you have done a brave thing but this is sadly what has always happened in Congress`," he had said.

The accusation came full force when Maharashtra Congress secretary Poonawalla called out the process of electing party president as "rigged" and said he had information that the delegates, who were going to vote for the election, were fixed.

(With Agency inputs)