Defeated Congress party rejects Gandhi resignation offer --- (Reuters) - Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul on Monday offered to step down as leaders of the Congress party after it suffered its worst ever election defeat, but in a bid to snuff out dissent against the country's leading political dynasty, party bosses declined. -- Congress, which has ruled India for most of its 67 years of independence including the last decade, is reeling from a humiliating reverse to bitter rival Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). -- But rather than single out the Gandhis, who led a lacklustre campaign in the face of Modi's barnstorming performance, Congress leaders facing at least five years in opposition rallied around the family. -- "Sonia and Rahul offered to resign but the CWC rejected it unanimously," said Amrinder Singh, a senior party leader from Punjab, referring to the elite Congress Working Committee which met at party headquarters in New Delhi. -- Congress leaders adopted a resolution authorising Sonia to take steps to revamp the party. -- Television channels showed grim-faced party leaders led by Sonia, the Italian-born widow of assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Next to her was Rahul, who has been singled out as failing to check Modi's meteoric rise to power. -- He admitted at the meeting he failed to meet expectations, party spokesman Janardan Dwivedi told reporters at a briefing. -- The scale of defeat was devastating. Congress won 44 seats in the 545-member lower house of parliament - less than the one-tenth required to be recognised as the main opposition group. The BJP's tally was 282. -- Sonia and her son won their seats in Uttar Pradesh, although Rahul did so with a vastly reduced majority. -- A source in the Congress said that Sonia offered her resignation as soon as the meeting began. -- "But the CWC said that we need you very much. We need a strong opposition to take on the BJP, we need a strong party to keep a check on the government," said the source, who attended the meeting but declined to be named. -- The reaction suggests that Congress is not about to break its historic bond with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has towered over politics for the best part of a century. --- Outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also spoke up at the meeting, saying resignations of the two leaders was not a solution to the crisis facing the Congress, arguably its most serious in decades. --- While party bosses were closing ranks behind Rahul, some Congress members lower down the chain of command revived calls for a greater role for his sister Priyanka, seen as a more natural politician. -- Priyanka, a year younger than her brother, campaigned in the family's home districts, mounting an aggressive challenge to Modi's high-decibel show that took the country by storm. - More, http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/19/uk-india-politics-congress-idINKBN0DZ0LV20140519