Two days after Rahul Gandhi had reportedly pitched for 50 per cent representation to women in AICC and other party wings, Congress today said he did not speak on the issue at the weekend.
"Rahulji had said no such thing during the interaction with newly-appointed party office-bearers here on Saturday. The meeting was just an occasion at which the office bearers, many of them first timers in the AICC, introduced themselves", a senior party leader said.
The leader, who declined to be identified, said this when asked in what context Gandhi had spoken about the issue of greater representation for women in party fora and whether he had also raised the much-talked about issue of women's reservation.
The senior leader ignored questions when told that party's spokesman Bhakt Charan Das had briefed the media on record on Gandhi's interaction with the new AICC team set up by him for the 2014 Lok Sabha poll.
On Saturday, Das had said "Gandhi talked about how to ensure 50 per cent representation to women in AICC...It's not about reservation. It's about their representation.
"When he observed that their (women) presence is not in the proportion it should be, he said the presence of women is less but it will definitely be 50 per cent in the coming two-three years," Das had said after the meeting.
Incidentally, Ambika Soni is the only woman among the 12 AICC general secretaries while of the 44 secretaries only five are women.
At the same time, Sonia Gandhi has created a record by an unprecedented 15 years stint as Congress president in the history of the organisation.
