Rahul Gandhi directs general secys to hold dialogues at state & district level

Cong vice-president asks party general secretaries to hold dialogues at state and district levels

With the 2014 Lok Sabha election debacle and subsequent defeats in four Congress-ruled states, the party has gone back to the drawing board. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi — who has been holding dialogues with party workers at the national level for the past two months — has directed All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretaries in-charge of states to replicate the dialogues at state and district levels. AICC general secretaries and frontal organisation such as Mahila Congress, Sewa Dal, Youth Congress, and National Students' Union of India heads have been asked to give in their feedback on planning a roadmap for the 129-year-old organisation by February 2015.

Not willing to effect any knee-jerk reactions, the party has desisted from carrying out the long-awaited AICC reshuffle and organisational overhaul after its electoral defeats with Gandhi preferring instead to first get feedback from party workers directly.

In the past two months, Gandhi has personally met groups of party workers - about 400 - and sought their views on how to take the party forward.

A general-secretary, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, said, “Rahul Gandhi had started these dialogues at the national level and now he wants it to be taken to the grassroots of the party, so that it can be reflected in the changes that are due to take place in the organisation.”

The four major thrust areas for the party are: how to go about strengthening the Congress’ core ideology, what type of organisational changes need to be done, how to expand the outreach of the Congress to hitherto-untouched segments as well as to groups that it has lost touch with and how should local and state-specific issues be addressed within the party.

Through the deliberations so far, some of the views put across include some in favour of only holding elections for organisational posts, some in favour of nominations, while others preferring a combination of both.

Another feedback has been that in the face of the onslaught of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva ideology, Congress party workers have to be made more aware of Congress’ ideological moorings.

Gandhi has, therefore, directed party secretaries to take the dialogue forward to the 200-odd leaders at state and district levels.

After this second rung of brain storming, a report would be submitted to the party and then a special AICC session would be held to discuss it.