Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday welcomed the unanimous resolution passed by the Congress Working Committee (CWC) asking Sonia Gandhi to continue as its interim chief till the next AICC session. Amarinder, however, agreed with Rahul Gandhi that Sonia’s continuation at the helm of the Congress could not be open-ended. Speaking during the Video Conference meet of the CWC, he also endorsed Rahul’s suggestion that some sort of structure needs to be put in place to assist the Congress president in handling the party’s affairs and functioning. The chief minister, in a statement here, said he agreed with senior party leader P Chidambaram that the next AICC session should be convened at the earliest, possibly within the next six months, to elect the new president. Since a regular session was precluded by the COVID-19 pandemic, it could be held virtually, he said. The chief minister also said he was in full agreement with the CWC resolution stressing the need for discussing and addressing intra-party differences within the party and not in the media or on a public forum. "There are ways to deal with issues. This is not done. The BJP is after us (the Congress) and then, in the middle of it, we find our own people striking a dissenting note," said Amarinder, speaking immediately after Rahul’s intervention questioning the timing of the letter written to Sonia by 23 party leaders. Amarinder had earlier urged Sonia Gandhi to continue to lead the party and hand over the baton to Rahul Gandhi once she decides to step down. Terming as ‘shameful and unacceptable’ the dissent by a group of Congress leaders, he pointed out that Sonia had always been accessible, and there was no need to pen down such a dissenting letter and then putting it in public domain. He said there is no village in the country without a Congress leader and the binding force for the party are the Gandhis, with Sonia Gandhi being responsible for holding it together for the past two decades. Two of the five generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the Congress had laid their lives for the country, he pointed.
