The decks have been cleared for the elevation of Rahul Gandhi as party president later this year in a uniquely Congress way. The subject did not come up during the two-hour discussions of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) here, but the minutes of the last CWC meeting in November 2016 — at which all the members had unanimously asked Mr. Gandhi to take over the reins of the party after senior CWC member A.K. Antony made the proposal — were “approved” on Tuesday, a senior CWC member told The Hindu .
What was officially “discussed and approved was the schedule for the organisational elections,” that will conclude with the election of the new president in October this year. After Tuesday’s meeting, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad answered in the negative when he was asked whether Mr. Gandhi’s elevation as president of the party was discussed. To a question about the last CWC meeting that asked Mr. Gandhi to take over the reins of the party, he said, “That was not discussed.” But evidently, the minutes of that meeting were approved.
The upcoming presidential and vice-presidential elections were briefly discussed, as was Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s initiative on bringing the Opposition parties together on the issue.
Manipur and Goa
Ms. Gandhi who chaired the CWC meeting at her residence, 10, Janpath (she was not present at the CWC discussions last November) had a strong message for the party: “..in Manipur and Goa, we failed to convert our winning numbers into forming a government. The outcome reminds us that the BJP will use their enormous resources and muscle power to steal mandates from us, just as they did in Arunachal and earlier in Uttarakhand. We cannot let this happen again.”
During the discussions, the consensus was that Kashmir was too important an issue for party members to speak in different voices. The party committee that was set up recently under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Kashmir, it was decided, would formulate a position for the party and everyone must abide by that.
Briefing journalists on the discussions, Mr. Azad accused the Modi government of “crushing voices of dissent.”
“Whether it is political parties, print media or electronic media, the government does not respect voices of dissent. It seems it does not respect democracy,” he said. Tuesday’s CWC meeting was attended, among others, by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former central Ministers P. Chidambaram and A.K. Antony, and general secretaries Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh, B.K. Hariprasad, Mukul Wasnik and Ambika Soni.
Oddly, though Mr. Chidambaram, Mr.Antony and Mr. Wasnik accompanied Mr. Azad to the press briefing, none of them spoke.
