An ailing Congress president Sonia Gandhi should quickly appoint her son Rahul Gandhi as party chief as the delay is only helping Prime Minister Narendra Modi achieve his ambition of a Congress-mukt India, a Congress leader said on Wednesday.

"If Sonia Gandhi is sick, then she should not make (the) Congress sick and she should not help Modi to make Congress-mukt bharat," former Goa Congress president John Fernandes said.

"If she wants to give leadership to Rahul Gandhi, she should do it fast because she is sick," Fernandes added.

He also faulted the Congress high command for not holding a session of the All India Congress Committee for three years, after the defeat in the 2014 general elections, which he said would only harm the party.

"Congress should not be sick. Congress can bounce back, if there are workers like me and we work together. Congress will come back because people want the Congress. And the Goa election is an indicator," the two-term Rajya Sabha MP said.

Fernandes was appointed state president of the party's Goa unit in 2013 soon after the Congress was routed in the 2012 state assembly elections. He was subsequently replaced by Luizinho Faleiro as state president in 2014.