Cong plans big outreach to civil society New CWC to be mix of youth, experience
NEWDELHI: The Congress plans to reach out to professionals, industrialists, civil society and all those who “influence the public opinion” and “are aligned to the party’s ideology” ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
As part of the outreach, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday met a dozen Muslim intellectuals and activists.
The exercise is similar to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sampark for Samarthan (Contact for Support) i nitiative launched on May 29 to mark the completion of four years of the Narendra Modi government and with an eye on the 2019 polls.
Those who attended Wednesday’s interaction with Gandhi included economist Abusaleh Sharif, former Planning Commission member Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, New Delhi-based historian S Irfan Habib, activist Farah Naqvi, educationists Rakhshanda Jalil and Ilyas Malik apart from Congress leaders Salman Khurshid and Nadeem Javed.
In the interaction, Gandhi spoke about the future strategy of the Congress and his party’s greater acceptability among regional parties, including past adversaries such as the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
The meeting came in the backdrop of the Congress party’s efforts to carve out a wider “secular and democratic alliance”.
In a letter to state chiefs, Congress general secretary in-charge of organisation Ashok Gehlot has asked them to “maintain a database of potential influencers” as per the direction of Gandhi, who will be “expanding his efforts to engage” with a wider section of the society.
“In every state, there are large number of professionals, civil society, activists, journalists, artists, writers, etc., who are aligned to Congress ideology, but may not be members of Congress party. But they are influencing the public opinion on the need to safeguard the idea of India, through their activities,” read the letter dated June 30, a copy of which has been reviewed by HT.
Under the Sampark for Samarthan campaign, about 4,000 BJP functionaries, including chief ministers, union ministers and panchayat members across the country, will contact 100,000 eminent personalities.
As part of the programme, BJP president Amit Shah met former Army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag, cricketer Kapil Dev, former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash C Kashyap, former chief justice of India RC Lahoti, veteran journalist Kuldeep Nayar and yoga guru Ramdev.
For its part, the Congress has identified the “potential influencers” as academics, retired bureaucrats, civil society activists, industrialists, doctors, lawyers, journalists at state and district levels, artists, former servicemen, “swamis, bishops and maulvis”, and trade union leaders.
Gehlot asked the state chiefs to appoint one general secretary to a meet wide range of “respected individuals” and collect their basic details. “The Congress president will be interacting with some of them either in Delhi or during his visits to states,” the letter said.
According to Habib, Gandhi acknowledged the “internal shortcomings” in the Congress party and said corrective measures were being taken.
He quoted Gandhi as saying that one of the weaknesses was that the Congress had closed its doors on its own partymen and lot of workers felt left out. “He said this hadn’t happened suddenly but over the years.”
Gandhi, according to Habib, also said the Congress itself had grown more “accommodative” towards other like-minded parties. He can now talk to leaders like “Akhilesh Yadav (of Samajwadi Party), MK Stalin (of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and Chandrababu Naidu (of TDP) more openly on common issues,” Gandhi reportedly said. “Earlier, these parties were not open to us. Now, we will formulate a common strategy and come together,” Habib quoted Gandhi as having said. NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi is expected to opt for a mix of youth and experience in the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body, which will be reconstituted soon.
For the past few days, Gandhi has been giving final touches to the CWC line-up along with party general secretary i n charge of the organisation, Ashok Gehlot, a leader familiar with the developments said. On Wednesday, the Congress president also held a detailed discussion with his mother and party’s former president Sonia Gandhi.
The leader cited above said on the condition of anonymity that some party general secretaries, including Digvijaya Singh, Janardan Dwivedi and Sushil Kumar Shinde who were dropped in the piecemeal reshuffle in recent months, are likely to be accommodated in the CWC.
Apart from Sonia, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gehlot, and senior leaders Motilal Vora, Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni and Mukul Wasnik, the panel will also include newly inducted general secretaries, including Mallikarjun Kharge, Oommen Chandy, Avinash Pande, KC Venugopal and Dipak Babaria and leaders in charge of different states such as Asha Kumari, Ratanjit Pratap Narain Singh, Shaktisinh Gohil, PL Punia, Jitendra Singh, Gaurav Gogoi and Rajeev Satav.
As per the Congress Constitution, 12 of the 25 CWC members have to be elected by delegates to the All India Congress Commit- tee (AICC), the party’s central assembly, and the rest are appointed by the party chief.
The committee also has permanent and special invitees without any restriction on the number.
The previous CWC was dissolved just before the party’s 84th plenary session at Delhi in March this year and converted into a steering committee to function till the reconstitution of the panel.
The term of the steering committee expires in six months. “There is no constitutional crisis. The Congress president has time till September to reconstitute the new CWC,” said another party functionary, also on condition of anonymity.
At the plenary that ratified the election of 48-year-old Gandhi election as the Congress president, the 2,000-odd AICC delegates unanimously authorised him to reconstitute the CWC.
In the history of the 132-yearold Congress party, elections to the CWC have been held only about a dozen times.
For the past two decades now, the CWC has not witnessed any election.
The last time such polls were held was during the Kolkata plenary in 1997 with Sitaram Kesri as the party president. Before that, elections were held during PV Narasimha Rao’s tenure at the Tirupati session in 1992 after a gap of about two decades.
Sonia Gandhi once listed the difficulties she faced in constituting the CWC. “Nominating CWC is not an easy task. Somebody will complain that he has been left out and why the other was taken. Somewhere someone will be left out.” NEWDELHI: Union minister Jayant Sinha on Wednesday expressed “regret” after facing criticism for felicitating six convicted cow vigilantes at his home in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh last week.
“I have said many times that the matter is still sub judice. It won’t be fair to talk on this. Law will take its own course. We have always worked towards punishing the guilty and sparing the innocent,” Sinha told a news agency in Ranchi on Wednesday.
“If by garlanding them (Ramgarh lynching case convicts) an impression has gone out that I support such vigilantism, then I express regret over it,” he added.
Sinha had last Thursday welcomed six of the seven men convicted for lynching a 55-year-old Muslim meat trader in Ramgarh in June last year.
The Hazaribagh MP on Saturday justified his action, stating that he was merely “honouring the due process of law” by welcoming with garlands and sweets the eight convicted men.
He clarified his position by pointing out the high court order suspending the sentence and released the convicts on bail.
Yashwant Sinha, his father and former BJP leader, had tweeted to say that “I did not approve of my son’s action.”