Congress presidential polls: Kharge to meet Sonia Gandhi today

Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge will meet party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday, the last day of filing nomination papers for party president post elections.

Earlier, on late Thursday night, G-23 leaders including Manish Tewari, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Prithviraj Chavan met at Anand Sharma's residence but did not divulge detail of the meeting.

Meanwhile, after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot announced on Thursday that he will not be contesting the election, political observers in Madhya Pradesh have started assuming that the route for former Chief Minister and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh to become chief of the party seems clear to some extent. However, the final outcome will be known only after the contestants would file their nominations and the elections are held.

The Madhya Pradesh Congress seems to have united to support Digvijaya Singh. More importantly, hours after Digvijaya Singh took the nomination form from the party headquarters in New Delhi and announced that he would file his nomination for the AICC president's election, state Congress head and former Chief Minister Kamal Nath called a meeting of party leaders at his residence in Bhopal and asked them to reach Delhi to back Digvijaya Singh.