New Delhi: A day after the Congress Working Committee (CWC)’s brainstorming meet over the party’s disastrous performance in Assembly elections, senior party leader Kapil Sibal on Tuesday hit out at the Gandhi family.
At the CWC meeting, Sonia Gandhi took the onus for the party’s debacle and reportedly offered to hand over the baton to more capable leadership. But, the party veterans reaffirmed their faith in Gandhi’s leadership while a couple of family loyalists rooted for Rahul Gandhi’s elevation as the party chief.
In an exclusive interview to a leading daily, Kapil Sibal said that it was time that Gandhi’s family step aside and pave the way for new leadership.
He said that the top leadership is living in a ‘cuckoo land’ and behaving in a way that it is not aware of its constant decline for 8 years now.
Being a leading voice of the dissident Group 23, Sibal is the first Congress leader to demand that Gandhis step away and make way for new leadership.
Sibal said that he was neither surprised over Cong’s rout in 5 states nor over leaders reposing their faith in high command.
“There is a Congress outside the CWC. Many leaders who are not in CWC but in Congress have a different point of view. Is it that we don’t matter because we are not in the CWC?” he said.
“Today, we want Sab ki Congress. Some others want a Ghar ki Congress. I certainly don’t want a Ghar ki Congress. And I will fight for a ‘Sab ki Congress’ till my last breath,” Sibal told the daily.
Jakhad blasts ‘sycophants’ within Congress.
In fact, he is not the only party veteran to have taken on Gandhis. Sunil Jakhad, senior Cong leader of the Punjab unit slammed the high command for the botched up transition of power in the state.
Speaking out on chaos within the party and misled by Delhi leaders, he said that Channi was not a national asset but a liability, a direct jibe at the Rahul-Priyanka duo for bungling up the party’s prospects in the state.
