Sonia Gandhi will be the new Congress president, the party's top decision-making body, the Working Committee, decided today after a meeting to choose her son Rahul Gandhi's successor as the party chief. The decision signalled a failure of the party to pick a chief outside the Gandhi family that has led it for most of its 130-year-old history. Rahul Gandhi had announced his decision to quit the party's top post in May after its disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha election. This morning, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had excused themselves from the zonal body meetings, saying they cannot be part of the selection process.
