Rahul Gandhi, Other Congress Leaders May Skip Winter Session: Sources

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and several other senior leaders of the party, including Jayram Ramesh and Digvijaya Singh, are likely to skip the Winter Session of Parliament, sources said. These leaders, along with Mr Gandhi, are expected to continue with their participation in the party's ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Sources said that the party leadership does not want the focus to shift from Bharat Jodo Yatra and that is why it has been decided that senior leaders will skip the Winter Session and continue with the Yatra.

The Winter Session of Parliament begins on Wednesday and will be held in the old Parliament building. The start of the session had to be delayed by a month in view of the ongoing Gujarat Assembly elections.

There is a crucial meeting of the Congress party scheduled for 4pm today, in which a decision is likely to be taken on the Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in Rajya Sabha. The party's Strategy Group meeting will be chaired by Sonia Gandhi.

Mallikarjun Kharge, who is now the party's national president, had tendered his resignation as LOP when he filed his nomination for the Congress president election last month, in view of the party's one-man-one-post policy.

Sources told NDTV that the Congress leadership may make an exception with Mr Kharge, allowing him to continue as the LOP. A final decision on this is likely to be taken by Mrs Gandhi today, in consultation with other senior party leaders.

P. Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh could be the alternative options for LOP, should the Congress leadership decide to stick to its one-man-one-post policy.

The government has planned to introduce 16 new bills during the Winter Session of Parliament, including the one that seeks to increase accountability and reform the electoral process in multi-state cooperative societies.