New Delhi:

As the Congress struggles with exits and crises in states it rules, like Punjab, party leader Kapil Sibal raised a fresh set of uncomfortable questions for the leadership but stopped short of naming the Gandhis. “In Congress, there is no elected president now. We don’t know who is taking decisions,” he said.

“We are G-23, definitely not Ji Huzoor-23. We will keep raising issues,” said Mr Sibal, who is a part of the “G-23” or group of 23 leaders who wrote last year to Sonia Gandhi asking for sweeping changes in the party and a “visible leadership”.

Another G-23 leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, has written to Sonia Gandhi asking for a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on the string of exits from the party and its crisis in Punjab.

“Why are people leaving? Maybe we should see whether it is our fault? We have to immediately call a CWC, at least so a dialogue can take place. We won’t leave the ideology of the party and go anywhere else. The irony of the Congress is that those who are close to them (leadership) have left and those who they think are not close to them are still there,” Mr Sibal said.

The comments come in the middle of the Congress’s crisis in Punjab, where state chief Navjot Sidhu has quit just days after he set the stage for party stalwart Amarinder Singh’s replacement as Chief Minister.

In recent weeks, the party has also lost leaders like Sushmita Dev and Luizinho Faleiro.

“I am really very, very upset that I have to come to you. But we have no choice,” said Mr Sibal.