New Delhi: The Congress will soon start the process of electing a new chief, as part of the process, Sonia Gandhi will hold meetings with senior party leaders over the next 10 days, and beginning today said Randeep Surjewala. The Gandhis will also meet the 23 “dissenters” who wrote a letter in August calling for sweeping organizational changes to arrest a “leadership drift”.

Rahul Gandhi, who took over as Congress president from Sonia Gandhi in 2017, quit last year after the party’s national election debacle, its second since it lost power in 2014. Rahul Gandhi, in a long resignation letter, asserted that a non-Gandhi should head the 135-year-old organization that has mostly been run by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Electing a non-Gandhi raises the prospect of an ugly leadership tussle erupting in the Congress; despite factions and infighting, deference to the Gandhis has always been a unifying factor for the organisation. However, Rahul Gandhi still takes all the decisions and is the party’s face in attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP.