Congress durbaris seek action against Anand Sharma, Hooda, Chavan

New Delhi: In the run-up to the presidential elections, the Congress has been rife with conflict as party officials sought action against colleagues who made anti-Gandhi statements and met with Ghulam Nabi Azad following his harsh criticism of the leadership after his exit.AICC state in-charge Vivek Bansal was urged by former Haryana Congress chief Kumari Selja to send Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the head of the Congress Legislature Party in Haryana, a notice on his recent meeting with Azad.

In addition, Prithviraj Chavan, the former chief minister of Maharashtra, was the target of a letter from Virender Vashisht, the AICC secretary in the Indian Overseas Congress, requesting action against him for making critical remarks about Rahul Gandhi.

Three G23 faction members, Hooda, Chavan, and Anand Sharma, met Azad at his home earlier this week. They talked about the upcoming presidential elections, Azad's public event in Jammu on September 4—which falls on the same day as a rally against price hikes by the Congress in Delhi—and his plans to found a new party in J&K before the state's Assembly elections.

Azad claimed in his letter of resignation that Rahul had dismantled the party's consultative process, sidelined all senior leaders, and allowed a new group of inexperienced sycophants to govern the organisation.

The call for action coincides with calls for presidential election openness.

Several politicians, including Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor, and Karti Chidambaram, have called for the AICC website to post the electoral rolls.

K C Venugopal, the general secretary of the AICC, rejected the demand, claiming that "There is no such practice in the Congress."