Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that he has made a decision on whether he will contest elections for the post of the party’s president, and that he will speak about it only when the polls are held.

“If I don’t stand, then you can ask why you didn’t stand and then I will answer,” Gandhi told reporters. “There will be clarity when the Congress president election takes place.”

The Congress will hold an election to pick its next president on October 17. The result will be declared two days later.

In July 2019, Gandhi had resigned as the Congress chief following the party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress had won only 52 of 543 parliamentary seats in the polls.

On August 22, reports claimed that Rahul Gandhi has refused to contest the election for the Congress president’s post. Incumbent Congress president Sonia Gandhi also reportedly expressed her desire not to continue in the post citing health reasons.

Since then, several Congress leaders including Rajya Sabha MP Mallikarjun Kharge, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Salman Khurshid have urged Gandhi to reconsider his decision and become the party chief again.

On Friday, Gandhi also said that he was not leading the Congress party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra but was only participating in it.

“I am a member of the Congress party and as a member of the Congress party and a person who agrees with the ideology of the Congress party, I am participating in this Yatra,” he said.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra of the Congress is a 3,570-kilometre-long tour that will cover 12 states and two Union Territories in about five months. The party has described the march as its biggest mass contact exercise since Independence and a “turning point” in India’s political history ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. The march was launched from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on September 8.

During the interaction on Friday, Gandhi also said that he hopes that the march will help him in understanding himself as a person and the country.

“I think it [march] is a powerful thing to do not just from the political standpoint but from a personal standpoint,” he said. “Of course, these days in politics, that is not fashionable.”