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.