Congress session in Jaipur mid-January

The long spell of suspense over holding the much talked about chintan shivir (brainstorming camp) of the Congress has come to an end on Wednesday with the party deciding to hold it in Jaipur, the capital of Congress-ruled Rajasthan, in mid-January next year.

Confirming this, sources in the party said, after having several rounds of deliberations the party leadership has zeroed in on Jaipur to hold the conclave, which is being called to generate fresh ideas ahead of the 2014 general elections.

Incidentally, the chintan shivir of the Congress will be held at a time when the Assembly election results of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh would be already out and the party would be on the verge of commencing preparations for the upcoming Assembly polls for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi.

As expected, the January conclave of the party would be a bigger exercise than the just-concluded “Samvad Baithak” (dialogue meeting) at Surajkund in Haryana. It will have more representation from the states, including chief ministers, PCC presidents and CLP leaders.

Interestingly, the idea of holding such a “shivir” was first mooted by Congress president Sonia Gandhi at the party’s Burari plenary session held here in December 2010. But the same could not materialise as both the Congress and the government kept battling one crisis after another since then. The first shivir was held at Pachmarhi in MP in 1998 soon after Mrs Gandhi took the reins of the organisation. The second shivir was held at Shimla in 2003 after which the Congress stormed to power at the Centre defeating BJP-led NDA government via the coalition route in May 2004.

Party sources expressed that the exercise at Jaipur would be crucial for the Congress and is expected to be the first such venture after the reshuffle in the AICC secretariat due soon.

The Jaipur “Chintan” session is expected to witness a greater role to be played by AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, as he is set to assume a larger role in the organisation.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/202700" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-0b08f2d5de9f9cdef87ca77ab5e7099c" value="form-0b08f2d5de9f9cdef87ca77ab5e7099c" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80410324" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.