India: Goa Congress urges Rahul Gandhi to withdraw resignation

Rahul Gandhi

Panaji, May 29 (PTI) The Goa Congress and its legislative wing Wednesday jointly urged Rahul Gandhi to withdraw his resignation from the post of party president and appealed to him to work for strengthening the organisation.

The Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) and the Congress Legislature Party (CLP), at a joint meeting here, passed an unanimous resolution urging Gandhi to withdraw his resignation from the top post, senior party leader Chandrakant Kavlekar told reporters.

Gandhi offered to resign during the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting in Delhi last week after the partys poor performance in the general elections. However, the highest decision-making body of the party unanimously rejected his resignation.

Kavlekar said Gandhi's act of tendering his resignation after the opposition party's dismal show in the just held polls shows his "large-heartedness".

Gandhi quit despite the fact that his contribution to get the Congress in power in the Lok Sabha polls was beyond any doubt, said the Leader of Opposition in the Goa assembly.

"We want that he should continue in the chair and strengthen the party so that we will win all the future elections," Kavlekar said.

He said Gandhi never lacked in his efforts to work for the 133-year-old party, which lost second successive Lok Sabha elections.

Gandhi, who was elected to the top party post in December 2017, should complete his term, Kavlekar said.

He said doubts have been expressed over the BJP's overwhelming victory in the 2019 general elections.

"People were against the Narendra Modi-led government and expressed anger against it across the country. But despite that the BJP won on several seats. Now there are doubts on these results, he said.

"People are not able to accept the results. We expect the truth to come to the fore in the future, Kavlekar said.

GPCC president Girish Chodankar said the Congress polled sizeable votes in Goa, but ended up winning just one of the two Lok Sabha seats and the solitary assembly segment out of the four where bypolls were held.

He said the party will approach voters and try to know what went wrong that its candidates lost.

Chodankar said the Congress is hopeful of winning 26 of the 40 assembly seats in Goa in the next state polls scheduled in 2022.