The meeting, which had letter writers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Hooda, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor and Prithviraj Chavan in attendance, saw Sonia and her son Rahul Gandhi make a genuine effort to accommodate the idea of intra-party reform in the status quoist Grand Old Party. At the meeting, were also loyalists of the party's first family - Kamal Nath (who played a key role in convincing Sonia to meet the "dissenters"), P. Chidambaram (who has occasionally joined cause with the reform lobby), AK Antony, Ambika Soni (who were critical of the letter writers at the stormy CWC meet in August), Harish Rawat and Pawan Bansal.