Raipur, India – The 85th Congress Plenary session of the Indian National Congress began today in Raipur, with leaders from across the country in attendance. The three-day session will primarily endorse the presidentship of Mallikarjun Kharge and pave the way for the new working committee led by him. The main agenda for the session is to lay out a clear roadmap for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and to forge poll tie-ups with like-minded parties to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
This session comes after a dramatic political slugfest between BJP and Congress over the arrest and release of Pawan Khera. Winning some of the major states in the upcoming assembly polls, including Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where the Congress rules, and Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, where the party is the principal opposition, would be the key to Congress’s revival at the Centre ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The party currently rules three states on its own: Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan.
Around 15,000 delegates are expected to attend the session. On the first day, the Steering Committee will decide on whether there will be elections to the top decision-making body or not. While a section within the party, especially the younger lot, wants elections to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), elders in the party want nominations instead to avoid dissidence within and enable cohesion in the top body as the party heads into a tough election cycle ahead.
The CWC has 25 members, including 12 elected members and 11 nominated ones, besides the Congress president and the leader of the party in Parliament, as per the party’s constitution. The last time elections were held to the CWC were in Kolkata in 1997 under Sitaram Kesri, also attended by Sonia Gandhi.
At the plenary, the party will also give direction to the rank and file to prepare for the state poll cycle ahead in Karnataka, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Mizoram. Nagaland and Meghalaya will witness polls on February 27. Tripura elections have already concluded. As part of poll preparations, the party would also have to work out solutions to end factionalism in the state units, including those in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana.
The Congress may formulate a plan to launch another yatra from East to West covering the northeastern states starting from Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat, seeking to carry on the momentum gained by the Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. The party has formed several committees to work out on issues to be deliberated during the session and to organise the conclave.
The plenary comes at a time when the Congress faces an unprecedented challenge to its electoral might and even to its primacy in the opposition block. While the Congress hopes to stitch an anti-BJP front for the 2024 polls having said that it alone has the moral and the organisational power to lead it, clouds of disunity hover all around. The Trinamool Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, and Aam Aadmi Party appear reluctant to accept the Congress stewardship. BRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao has been holding his own parleys to rein in the BJP. The TMC had on Wednesday attacked former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for saying that the ruling party of Bengal was working to help the BJP.
Nearly 2,000 police personnel are expected to be deployed during the three-day plenary session of the Congress in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur district, according to the state’s Home Minister Tamradhwaj Sahu
