Congress: AICC Session in Gujarat after 6 Decades
Asia News Agency
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) Session was held in Gujarat after 64 years. The AICC is the presidium or the central decision-making assembly of the Indian National Congress. It is composed of members elected from state-level Pradesh Congress Committees and can have as many as a thousand members.
The objective: The objective of the two-day AICC session that began Tuesday was to discuss major issues confronting the nation under the BJP-led government at the Centre and chalk out the Congress party’s strategy to strengthen the organisation at the grassroots level to face the challenge from the saffron party in the assembly elections in key states like Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
The meeting was attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.
The Assembly elections in Gujarat are scheduled to be held at the end of 2027. Two years before the elections to the Gujarat Assembly, the Asia Age notes the “Congress is back to one of its original strongholds to hold a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee to mark the occasion of the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s presidentship of the party and the 75th year of the Constitution."
Still clueless: ‘Patel resolution’: The ‘Patel resolution’ of the AICC sets the framework for what the Congress sees as the major political challenge — to fight the Narendra Modi regime which it likens to imperial British rule — but this is not the first time the Congress has put out such a template. It is the same cry, writes The Telegraph, “differently christened — a clash of civilisations, war of ideas, battle of ideologies.
“The radical differences between the visions of the Congress Party and the ‘sangh’-Modi establishment barely need restating…..But the job of India’s chief Opposition party does not get done by spelling out its deep differences with the well-entrenched Modi regime and sounding the alarm every now and then over perils that secular, pluralist India faces. Countering the threat the Congress articulates rather well needs feet on the ground and muscle for a punch-up."
Nothing has changed: Once again, at Ahmedabad, "Congress leaders have resolved to revitalise the organisation. Such resolutions have begun to sound tired and repetitive. Rahul Gandhi had promised, publicly, to learn lessons from the whopping assembly defeats of 2013 — including the loss of Delhi to Arvind Kejriwal’s fledgling Aam Aadmi Party — and revive and revitalise the Congress and restore its political virility. The decline since then — in the face of repeated resolutions to return to robust health — has been steady. The summer of 2024, when the Congress doubled its Lok Sabha tally, could have been a moment for the party to pivot. The opportunity was not grabbed. The AICC meet at Ahmedabad offers little clue that anything has changed.”
