Rebels to meet Sonia, Kesri

An informal meeting of the dissident leaders including Randhawa, Henry, former Punjab Minister Sardul Singh, Bir Devinder Singh and Darshan Singh was held here yesterday to devise the strategy to unseat Bhattal.

Meanwhile, PCC general secretary Santokh Singh Choudhary today told reporters here that Bhattal would not quit any of the two posts of state Congress president or Congress leader in the assembly. He said the state executive committee meeting held at Chandigarh on Wednesday had reposed full confidence in her leadership.

He claimed there was no dissidence in the Congress and blamed the party’s poor show at the hustings to failure of the alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The dissidents had raised a banner of revolt against Bhattal even before the recent parliamentary elections. However, the dissidence movement was suspended for a while during the elections after intervention by Meira Kumar. But with th Congress getting obliterated in the elections in Punjab, the dissidents have trained their guns at Bhattal with additional fire power.

Most of the prominent dissident leaders stayed away from the executive committee meeting at Chandigarh on Wednesday chaired by Bhattal to analyse the results of the recent elections.

They also criticised Bhattal’s attempts to blame other factors for the crushing defeat and said instead of cooking up excuses she should introspect to find out why the Congress had lost so miserably.

PATIALA: According to a release issued by Gopal Chand Kanugia, a section of Congressmen have demanded Bhattal’s resignation. These include Ravail Singh Sethi, Parkash Mittal, Faqir Singh, Sajjan Singh, Harbans Lal, Warayam Singh, Manmohan Singh, Rajinder Singh Sabharwal, Ram Kumar, Sudarshan Mittal, Sandeep Singh and Dharampal.

They have alleged that the party has been weakened by groupism and internal rifts and that the grassroot workers have lost faith in it. The party has also lost its democratic character. They have demanded that a committee be set up by the high command to look into the causes of the debacle in the elections.