A day after Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, now seen as one of the main dissenting Congress leaders, reiterated the demand for elections to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), a two-year-old video surfaced on Friday in which he strongly argued against elections to the Committee.
The video from March 18, 2018, is of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session where Mr. Azad had moved a proposal to authorise the Congress president to nominate members to the CWC.
“In our party's constitution, there is provision of election for the CWC. In 135 years of our history, many leaders became president who were elected, but on very few occasions, less than a dozen times there were elections for the working committee. Mostly AICC left it to the president to form the CWC; looking at our huge nation he has the responsibility to include leaders from different regions. It has been our culture that formation of CWC is left to the President,” Mr. Azad says in the video.
In an interview to a news agency on Thursday, Mr. Azad had said, “Those CWC members, Pradesh Congress Committee presidents and District Congress Committee chiefs who are criticising us, know they would never get elected otherwise. Any one who is a true Congressman will welcome what we are saying.”
He had also said that candidates who come through the election route will have 51% party support while a nominated person may not even have one per cent backing.
The old video clearly seems part of Congress strategy to put pressure on the 23 dissenters who had written to party president Sonia Gandhi, questioning the party’s functioning.
Late on Thursday evening, Ms. Gandhi reorganised the Congress’ parliamentary strategy groups (PSGs) for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha — as a move to dilute the powers of Mr. Aazd and the Deputy Leader, Anand Sharma.
A senior dissenting leader, however, claimed that the reshuffle of PSGs is is not a snub. He said the only new addition to the Rajya Sabha group is K.C. Venugopal, party general secretary (organisation) and a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, who comes in place of P. Chidambaram.
But Mr. Chidambaram will continue to take part in deliberations as he is part of a committee that will examine ordinances brought in by the government in the last few months.
In Lok Sabha group, Manish Tewari is the only member who has been replaced with Raveent Singh Bittu as all the other members of the PSG were members earlier too.
