Top Congress leaders may resign to give Rahul Gandhi free hand

NEW DELHI: The Congress leadership, while firming up a plan for elevating Rahul Gandhi as party president, is trying to bring back order to its house that's bickering over his decision to go on a sabbatical. A source said a group of trusted senior leaders are thrashing out a plan to demonstrate the unquestionable final say the Gandhis would have in deciding the party's future leadership and end the buzz of a tussle among various groups, before the AICC session.

One suggestion being floated is to give the Congress president, a 'unanimous and voluntary' hand to reconstitute the top leadership in a kind of Kamaraj Plan. The late Congress veteran, K Kamaraj, had executed a plan that saw top leaders resigning to enable Nehru to re-constitute his team in 1963.

"Kamaraj Plan has a larger context as many Congress chief ministers and Cabinet ministers offered resignations to return to party work. Only some aspects of that method may be explored," a leader said, adding, "at the moment it is being tossed around in certain quarters as one of the ideas for consideration". If it crystallizes, many top party functionaries would offer resignations from CWC and AICC to allow Rahul Gandhi to re-constitute the leadership. A second AICC session may be held in August-September if required.

Suggesting such a plan became imperative after Gandhi's sabbatical was used by certain quarters to give the impression that he was "upset about not having his way in re-positioning the party due to resistance from senior leaders. "There is no question of any internal resistance to Rahul's leadership," the source said. He added that after the LS polls, key leaders urged that Rahul should take over as party president and "should constitute his team of leadership, preferably from the younger generation" while seniors would "voluntarily step aside to play a supporting role".