G-23 group was media's idea, never existed: Tharoor

Congress presidential poll candidate and senior leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday said that there is no G-23 group in the Congress party further adding that it was all media's idea.

Speaking to reporters in Hyderabad, Tharoor claimed that the group of 23, or G-23, in the party never existed and was merely created by the media.

In August 2020, reports had said that 23 senior Congress leaders, including Tharoor, wrote to party president Sonia Gandhi, asking for a complete transformation of the organisation. The signatories had urged Gandhi to address the leadership question in the party.

Tharoor claimed on Monday that several more leaders were contacted in connection with the letter, but only 23 were available to sign it.

"As far as I can tell you, couple of senior leaders wrote a letter, they invited a large number of people to support them. They told me that by phone they had contacted over a hundred people. It so happened that Covid lockdown was on in 2020 and at that time only 23 people were available in Delhi. So that's why 23; it could have been hundred or it could have been more. These were the people available to sign. That's it," Tharoor said

Tharoor's remark comes a day after BJP's Amit Malviya said that the G-23 abandoned their own Shashi Tharoor in favour of Mallikarjun Kharge.

G-23 is a term used for 'rebel' grouping of the Congress that had strongly pitched for reforms. This group of 23 Congress MPs wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 asking for stronger leadership.

Last month Shashi Tharoor filed the nomination to contest in the Congress presidential poll. Mallikarjun Kharge is the other frontrunner in the contest. The election will take place on October 17 and the results will be announced on October 19.

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