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CWC meet today, decision on internal elections likely
The meeting, to be held offline for the first time in more than 18 months, will also discuss the current political situation.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest executive body, will meet on Saturday to give another try to fix the schedule for long-pending organisation elections — an exercise that will have to keep in mind upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa, according to people aware of the matter.
The meeting, to be held offline for the first time in more than 18 months, will also discuss the current political situation, with a focus on UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri, where eight people died when a car mowed down protesting farmers, and in the violence that followed. The incident led to major political protests, and several Congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra met the families of the victims after initially being disallowed by the UP Police.
The CWC expected to back the demands of the Congress delegation that met President Ram Nath Kovind, and asked for dismissal of junior minister of state Ajay Mishra, and a probe in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident by sitting judges of the Supreme Court or high court.
But bigger challenges for the CWC lie elsewhere.
A schedule proposing organisation elections in June this year was rejected because it was close on the heels of the five assembly polls in April-May. Now, the new schedule must take into account the upcoming elections in four states expected in the next six months, the people cited above said.
They added that a majority of the Congress leaders want Rahul Gandhi to return to the helm and assume the formal position of the president of the party, particularly since he is deeply involved in nearly all key decisions of the party now. A senior leader, however, added: “If Rahul Gandhi or any active Congress leader is chosen as the president, there might not be an immediate election at all. Rahul was the last president and he resigned after the Lok Sabha elections on July 3, 2019.”
But organisational polls will be necessary for election to various bodies such as CWC and the Central Election Committee. Last year, at the CWC, when demands were made to hold elections for these two important bodies, Gandhi had agreed and assured party colleagues that an internal polls would be held at least for the working committee.
The other key issue in the meeting will be how issues raised by a group of Congress leaders, referred to as G23, are tackled. Last month, senior Congress leader and one of the top members of the G23, a group of 23 that wrote letter to party chief Sonia Gandhi asking for sweeping changes in the organisation, demanded a CWC meeting to discuss the Punjab and Goa situations and the “exodus” of leaders leaving the party in those two states.
Two party leaders aware of the matter added that loyalists of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were expected to thwart any criticism over Punjab (where there has been a change of guard with Charanjit Singh Channi stepping in as chief minister after a bitter feud between former CM Captain Amarinder Singh and state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu) with the argument that the situation is under control.
