After Gulam Nabi Azad quitting in a huff, the Congress party suffered another major setback with veteran leader Anand Sharma resigning as steering committee chairman for the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls.

“The Congress needs to think beyond the Gandhis,” Sharma told NDTV today as the party faces the issue of choosing a leader after Rahul Gandhi expressed his reluctance to take over the post.

“There is no reason why the list should be confined to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Is the Congress only confined to these two names? Are we not ridiculing the history of the Congress party,” Sharma said on NDTV.

He said that it was a number of leaders who had kept the party afloat after Indira Gandhi was expelled in 1978. “Those were people like us… This party belongs to all of us.”

One of the 23 leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi two years ago, demanding organisational changes, Mr Sharma said, “We are not rebels, we are reformists.”

He said given the continuing exclusion and insults, as a self-respecting person he was left with no choice but to resign from the party post.

Mr Sharma has written a letter to Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi and submitted his resignation from the post. He was feeling ignored and sidelined for the decisions regarding the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls, sources close to Anand Sharma said.

Another prominent G 23 member Kapil Sibal had resigned from the Congress Party and is now a Rajya Sabha member with the backing of the Samajwadi Party.