Sonia Gandhi starts inviting over 400 leaders for Congress Chintan Shivir

Though strategy for the next Lok Sabha elections remains the broad focus of the brainstorming session, issues like how to revive the party across the country, future alliances with like-minded parties besides the leadership issue are also expected to be debated among the senior leaders, reports ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has formally started inviting over 400 senior leaders who will attend the party’s Chintan Shivir from May 13-15 in Udaipur, Rajasthan to prepare a roadmap for the 2024 national elections. On April 28, AICC general secretary in charge of the organisation KC Venugopal started sending individual letters on behalf of Gandhi.

“On behalf of the Congress chief, I invite you to this historic chintan shivir, where we shall discuss various subjects relevant to today’s political situation and also deliberate on the broad strategy of our party in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” the invite read.

The invitees include key party leaders, including all Congress Working Committee members, all members of Parliament, all Pradesh Congress Committee chiefs, all Congress Legislature Party leaders, heads of all frontal organizations like Youth Congress, Mahila Congress, NSUI and heads of all departments.

The state leaders have been asked to confirm their participation and share their travel plan so that accommodation and transport could be arranged by the party. An email id has been specially created for the brainstorming session being dubbed as the navsankalpshivir2022 by the grand old party and the leaders have been asked to share their details and report at the venue by 6 pm on May 12.

Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot is facilitating the big event called for by Sonia Gandhi following the party’s poor show in the five assembly polls namely Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur recently. The last year was equally bad for the Congress which lost polls in Assam, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry.

Tamil Nadu was the only saving grace where the DMK-Congress alliance came to power defeating the AIADMK-BJP combine. The Congress, which lost the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, does not want to let that happen in 2024. Hence, the brainstorming session.

Though strategy for the next Lok Sabha elections remains the broad focus of the brainstorming session, issues like how to revive the party across the country, future alliances with like-minded parties besides the leadership issue are also expected to be debated among the senior leaders.

The six groups set up by Sonia Gandhi to prepare papers on different topics like political situation, economy, organisation, agriculture, social welfare and youth and empowerment and hold debates at the shivir have started working on the documents, which will highlight the failures of the central government and suggest ways to address the problems being faced by the people.

Six senior leaders have been named convenor of the groups — Mallikarjun Kharge for political situation, P Chidambaram for economy, Mukul Wasnik for organisation, Salman Khurshid for social welfare, Bhupinder Hooda for agriculture and Amarinder Raja Warring for youth and empowerment.

Besides these panel discussions, the party leaders are expected to reiterate concern over trampling of rights of the poor, the weaker sections of society and the minorities. Burning issues including unemployment, inflation of essential food items, and energy crisis are expected to figure in the discussions.