After holding a rally in Delhi and a “Samvad Baithak (dialogue meeting)” at Surajkund, Haryana, last month, the Congress has decided to hold a two-day “chintan shivir” and a one-day AICC meeting in Jaipur from January 18. The AICC meeting will be the first outside Delhi in nearly two decades.
The party, which is gearing up for the Lok Sabha elections, has already sent Central observers to different states to assess the ground situation and identify candidates. Before that, it set up election coordination committees and three sub-groups — on pre-poll alliances, manifesto and government programmes and communications and publicity.
Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi on Saturday told reporters the chintan shivir on January 18 and 19 would see discussions on the political and economic situations, the challenges before the country and society, and review the progress in rural and urban areas. The AICC meeting would be held on January 20th.
Mr Dwivedi clarified that the AICC meeting would not pass resolutions on political, economic and other issues, as has been the practice.
Instead, it would discuss the conclusions of the brain-storming session and set the party an agenda to tackle future challenges. The chintan shivir would be the third exercise of its kind since Mrs Sonia Gandhi became Congress president.
The Panchmarhi “Vichar Manthan Shivir” (September 4 to 6, 1998) and Shimla “Vichar Manthan Shivir” (July 7 to 9, 2003) were dominated by the issue of pre-poll alliances with non-BJP secular parties. These brain-storming sessions were held at a time when the Congress had been out of power at the Centre and the NDA had managed the support of secular allies even after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
This time, the Congress has to decide whether to go ahead with UPA 3 or follow the “ekla chalo (go alone)” line to revive the party in the major states.
About 300 top leaders, including party chief ministers, CLP leaders, some Union ministers, CWC members and frontal organisation chiefs, will take part in the brain-storming sessions, besides Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, under the chairmanship of Mrs Gandhi. About 1,200 delegates are to attend the AICC meeting.
The Jaipur exercise will be crucial and is expected to be the first such venture after a proposed reshuffle of the AICC secretariat in which Rahul Gandhi is set to assume a larger party role.