Biggest Problem Is That Our Leader Walked Away: Salman Khurshid On Congress Crisis

Senior Congress leader and former external affairs minister Salman Khurshid thinks that Rahul Gandhi’s decision to quit as party chief after the 2019 Lok Sabha election drubbing was the biggest problem the Grand Old Party could not bounce back. Khurshid said that after the Lok Sabha election defeat, Congress didn’t get together to analyse the reasons behind their disastrous performance.

"We haven't really got together to analyse why we got defeated. Our biggest problem is our leader has walked away," Khurshid said, adding that "It has kind of left a vacuum."

The senior Congress leader said that although Sonia Gandhi stepped in to fill that vacuum but she has given enough indications that she is nothing more than a “stop-gap arrangement”.

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"Sonia Gandhi stepped in, but there is more than an indication that she is treating herself as a stop-gap arrangement. I wish it wasn't so," the former external minister said.

On August 10, Sonia Gandhi was appointed as the interim chief of the Congress party pending the election for the permanent chief after months of confusion over Rahul Gandhi's leadership. 

Sonia Gandhi, who first became the Congress chief in 1998, had handed over the baton to her son Rahul Gandhi in 2017 after leading the party for nearly two decades. However, Rahul Gandhi didn't have a desirable tenure as Congress chief. He quit the post following the Congress party's abysmal show in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.