Recast CWC misses '50 under 50' goal, looks like please all plan

However, out of the 39-member Congress Working Committee announced by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge on August 20, only 2, Sachin Pilot and Gourav Gogoi, are under 50 years of age and this puts a question mark on the proposed '50 under 50' plan. Reports ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri By Amit Agnihotri

New Delhi: The Congress had been claiming to implement the '50 under 50' formula to give a younger look to the party ahead of the 2024 national polls but could not put it into practice in the new Congress Working Committee (CWC) list that was announced by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday. The '50 under 50' formula, which was part of the 2022 Udaipur Declaration, meant that the party planned to have at least half of all office bearers under 50 years of age to give it a younger look, give leadership roles to the younger workers and prepare them for the coming decades.

It was expected that the key organizational reform would begin with the reconstitution of the highest decision-making body - the CWC and would also extend to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and PCC office bearers.

However, out of the 39-member Congress Working Committee (CWC) announced by Mallikarjun Kharge on August 20, only two, Sachin Pilot and Gourav Gogoi are under 50 years of age and this puts a question mark on the proposed "50 under 50" plan. The rest 37 are all veterans, who have been around in the party’s top decision-making body for decades and their inclusion showed that the CWC recast was more of an attempt to please everyone rather than reform the grand old party.

For instance, Anand Sharma, a member of the G23 group of dissenters, who had been marginalized for questioning Sonia Gandhi’s leadership in 2020, was back in the recast CWC. The recast of the CWC itself got delayed even by the normal expectation of the grand old party. Mallikarjun Kharge took office as the new party chief in October 2022. Soon after, he dissolved the CWC and constituted a Steering Committee to manage the party’s affairs in its place.

Mallikarjun Kharge’s election was ratified in the Plenary Session held in Raipur in February and it was expected that the new party chief would announce his team including the CWC and the AICC office bearers in a few weeks. But the decision on the CWC got delayed by six months fueling expectations that an elaborate national-level exercise to identify young talent worthy of being in the top decision-making body was on and was consuming time.

"If this CWC was to be announced, it could have been done much earlier. It would have then paved the way for the AICC reshuffle that is being talked about and would have allowed the party functionaries to prepare for the 2024 challenge. I can't understand why it took so long to finalize the CWC. The delay had given rise to many expectations but I think the aspirants would have to wait for some more time," said a former AICC general secretary.

Another AICC former general secretary said that “if the party high command wanted to keep a balanced CWC which had a mix of young and old leaders, the previous body was good enough and a formal announcement could have been made in March itself.”

Explaining the induction of former Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot, a party insider said that it was done to balance power equations in the poll-bound Rajasthan. A senior AICC functionary pointed at the inclusion of Kanhaiya Kumar and Deepender Hooda as permanent invitees and Alka Lamba and Praniti Shinde as special invitees to the CWC as a move to include younger leaders but acknowledged that these were not proper CWC membership positions.