Congress president Kharge calls Steering Committee meet Feb 24, all eyes on CWC polls

Elections to the Congress Working Committee have not been held within the grand old party in the last two decades, with former party president Sonia Gandhi nominating members of the body since she took charge in 1998. Mallikarjun Kharge, who took charge as the new Congress chief following party president elections back in October, 2022, had promised during campaigning that he would hold CWC elections if elected to the top post, writes ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi: All eyes in Congress are on elections to the crucial Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting during the Plenary Session at Raipur slated to be held between February 24 and 26. According to party insiders, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has convened a meeting of the Steering Committee on February 24, the opening day of the Plenary Session, where a call would be taken on whether or not to hold elections for the CWC.

“The CWC has to be formed but whether it will be reconstituted through elections or a nomination process is yet not clear,” former union minister and ex-Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan told ETV Bharat. Within the Congress-fold, the CWC takes major calls, but members of the top body have not been elected over the past two decades as former party chief Sonia Gandhi resorted to the practice of nominating members since she took charge in 1998.

While campaigning for the party president polls last year, Kharge had promised that he would hold CWC elections. After taking over as Congress chief on October 26, 2022, he dissolved the CWC and replaced it with a Steering Committee to oversee day-to-day functions of the party. Most CWC members had made it to the Steering Committee.

Since then, there has been much speculation in the grand old party whether the new party president would opt for elections to the powerful CWC or not as conducting the polls would send a positive signal among the rank and file of the Congress which is trying to assert its democratic credentials vis a vis the BJP before the voters.

“Holding the CWC elections will send a positive signal. It will showcase that we have strong democratic processes within the party,” AICC general secretary in charge of Jammu and Kashmir Rajani Patil said. The move is also expected to rejuvenate the organization ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, said party insiders.

Since taking over as party chief, Kharge has been trying to implement one of the key decisions taken at the May 2022 Chintan Shivir in Udaipur - having 50 percent of all office bearers under 50 years of age. As per the party constitution, the CWC has 24 members, including the Congress president. The Congress chief has the authority to nominate half of the members and can announce elections for the remaining seats.

A call for holding internal elections for all party posts including the Congress president and the CWC, had been raised by the G23, a group of senior dissenters headed by veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad in 2020. Though the G23 hardly exists today as a pressure group within the grand old party with Azad having left and most other members accommodated in various party roles, the issue of CWC elections has been hotly debated within the party circles.

Soon after the G23 rebellion in 2020, then-party president Sonia Gandhi convened a CWC meeting to discuss the issues raised by the dissenters. However, the meeting, conducted virtually due to COVID restrictions, was used by Sonia Gandhi loyalists like former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat and Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot to slam Azad and the group of dissenters by him.

The loyalists had claimed that the G23 had tried to challenge Sonia Gandhi’s authority while the dissenters struggled to explain that they were only asking for a revamp of the party organization to prepare for future challenges. Later, in an attempt to dilute the G23 charge, Sonia Gandhi reshuffled the CWC and brought in a lot of new faces while making several younger leaders like Youth Congress chief BV Srinivas as permanent invitees. The idea was to rope in younger leaders in the decision-making process of the party and be in sync with the changing demographic profile of the voters in the country.

According to old timers, the CWC polls have the power to energize the local teams and generate hope among the various state leaders to test their ability and popularity to get themselves elected to the top body. In a way, such a democratic exercise is also a test of the influence that many veterans claim to have in the party system, the old timers said.

Besides the CWC polls, a revamp of the AICC and PCC teams is also on the cards during the Plenary Session where top leaders from across the country would be present, said party insiders.

Before the presidential elections, the state units had passed a resolution authorizing the new party chief to appoint the state unit heads, if he so wished. Following that, most of the state units were recast but the office bearers were appointed through a consensus rather than an election route. As holding elections in state units is a mammoth exercise, the issue would be debated in the Plenary Session, said party insiders.