With Rahul Gandhi firm on quitting as party chief, Congress Working Committee to meet again

The Congress party will be holding another Working Committee meeting this week to discuss the leadership issue amid reports of Rahul Gandhi not ready to take back his resignation as the party chief. 

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and senior party leaders have been trying to make Rahul change his mind from exiting the post. 

Party treasurer Ahmed Patel and organisational general secretary KC Venugopal met with Gandhi at his residence yesterday and urged him to continue to lead the party.

Congress Working Committee (CWC) met last weekend to deliberate on the poll debacle and strategise on ways to bring in structural reform in the party.

It is being reported that taking the moral responsibility of party's nemesis in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, Rahul offered to step down - a move that was unanimously rejected by party's top brass.

Watch: Rahul adamant on resignation, wants a non-Gandhi as next Congress president

Sources said that despite senior leaders making serious attempts to convince Gandhi to rethink his decision, Gandhi is said to be unfazed, news agency ANI reported.

Party leaders, sources said, maintained that Congress cannot afford to have a new leader at the helm for rebuilding the organisation at this juncture and that the responsibility for the defeat is collective and not individual.

"The Congress party expects everyone including the media to respect the sanctity of a closed-door meeting of the CWC. Various conjectures, speculations, insinuations, assumptions, gossip and rumour mongering in a section of the media is uncalled for and unwarranted," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala posted on Twitter.

Meanwhile, more trouble for Congress as three more state party chiefs tendered their resignations on Monday, taking the total number to six.

Congress party chiefs of Jharkhand, Assam and Punjab have also resigned in addition to those from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha. 

Karnataka Pradesh Campaign Committee chairman HK Patil has also resigned. 

(With inputs from agencies)