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CWC announces drive to fight BJP over ideology, Ambedkar
The party said also it plans a Samvidhan Bachao Rashtriya Padayatra (Save the Constitution national march) between January 26, 2025 and January 26, 2026, aims to overhaul its organisation over the next 12 months to make it battle-ready for the future elections
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Thursday announced a 13-month-long campaign centered around the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi, the architect of the Indian Constitution Bhimrao Ambedkar, and the Constitution itself — in a bid to corner the ruling dispensation on what is sees as three ideological battlegrounds between the grand old party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The party said also it plans a Samvidhan Bachao Rashtriya Padayatra (Save the Constitution national march) between January 26, 2025 and January 26, 2026, aims to overhaul its organisation over the next 12 months to make it battle-ready for the future elections, and announced that an All-India Congress Committee (AICC) session will be held in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bastion Gujarat in April next year.
These key decisions were taken at a special “Nav Satyagraha Baithak” of CWC in Belagavi to mark the 100th anniversary of the Belgaum (as it was called then) session of the Congress presided over by Mahatma Gandhi.
“We have decided to go for massive political campaign from December 27 to January 26, 2025. The campaign on Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhan will be a continuous campaign. It will include padyatras in villages, block level, district level and state level. There will be rallies, seminars, public meeting and public rallies. These will be led by our leaders. We will raise voice against attacks and degradation of Constitution. We will raise common people’s issues such as price rise, corruption,” said Congress general secretary KC Venugopal.
The party said its AICC session in Porbandar, Gujarat next year will mark the place where Mahatma Gandhi was born, and send a larger political message in a state that has been under BJP rule for 36 years.
At the meeting on Thursday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge launched a fresh attack against the BJP, saying that changing the Constitution was an “old project” of the party and its ideological fount the Rashtriya Swayamsevan Sangh, which, he said, criticised the Constitution, the Tricolor, Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Ambedkar.
“When the Prime Minister was elected to the Parliament for the first time, he bowed his head on the steps of the old Parliament, after which the new Parliament was built. We are afraid that this time before taking oath in the new Parliament House, he bowed his head in front of the Constitution! We know, this is their old project. They have criticized the Constitution, the tricolor, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, opposed everyone. They have burnt effigies of everyone,” Kharge said.
The CWC meeting thus became an attempt to the Congress’s new ideological battle against the BJP, and to give a fillip to the grand old party’s quest to revive itself as an election-winning matching. Both pose major challenges for the Congress, which has faced a series of electoral losses in the past 10 years even as a Narendra Modi-led BJP has not just stormed to election victories but also appropriated the legacy of ideological and freedom movement icons such as Sardar Patel, Subhas Chandra Bose and Swami Vivekananda.
Citing Union home minister Amit Shah’s recent statement on Ambedkar in the Rajya Sabha, Kharge said: “We heard the home minister’s extremely insulting statement about Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar during the discussion on the Constitution in the Parliament session. We objected, protested, demonstrated. Now protests are taking place all over the country.”
“But the Prime Minister and the government are not ready to accept their mistake. Far from seeking an apology and resignation from Amit Shah, they supported the objectionable statement. A false case was registered against Rahul Gandhi. This is the attitude of today’s rulers towards the Constitution and its creator. But we are neither going to be afraid of anyone nor are we going to bow down. We will fight till the end for the ideology of Nehru-Gandhi and the respect of Babasaheb,” the Congress president said.
Kharge accused the BJP of “falsely accusing us” for not respecting Ambedkar but “the statue of Babasaheb in the Parliament was installed by Congress in 1967”.
Kharge backed the idea of Nav Satyagraha and said, “today His Excellency, who holds a constitutional post, is also questioning Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Those who have taken oath on the Constitution are the ones who are spreading lies.”
The CWC expressed “distress” over “the ongoing degradation of our democracy” saying institutions like the judiciary, Election Commission, and media have been politicised. It condemned the Centre’s proposed amendments to pave way for simultaneous elections, the tweaks in election rules on disclosure requirements for poll panel, and said it was “deeply concerned by the state-sponsored increase in communal and ethnic hatred.”
While reiterating its demand for a socio-economic caste census and removal of the 50% ceiling on reservations, the Congress said it remains “fiercely committed to protecting the Indian Constitution and the ideals of the Indian Independence Movement.”
The Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhan Abhiyan will start with a rally in Belagavi on December 27 and culminate at Mhow on January 26, 2025, followed by the nationwide Samvidhan Bachao Rashtriya Padayatra which will be conducted as a relay from village to village until January 26, 2026. “This Padayatra will be from village to village, township to township in the form of a relay. The details will be announced shortly,” the resolution said.
