Congress Plenary session to prepare 2019 Lok Sabha poll roadmap begins

NEW DELHI: As Chandrababu Naidu’s no-confidence motion and Arvind Kejriwal’s abject apology trended on the news circuits, the Indian National Congress began the pre-plenary session meet, primarily to set the party’s agenda for 2019, as also to steer its internal structural reforms.

The ratification of Rahul Gandhi’s presidentship by the AICC delegates would be the underlining theme of the plenary, the text and the context of which was discussed on Friday.

What kept the members of the Subject Committee engaged till late in the evening were primarily two questions — one, the issue of alliances with like-minded parties and two, the vision document on the road ahead for the next five years. “It’s going to be a workers’ plenary” is how Congress spokesperson R S Surjewala sought to predict.

For the Congress, opting for alliances may appear to be a foregone conclusion. But sources say inside the closed-door meeting, many of the leaders, rather keen to protect their state interests, opposed a blind-eyed approach to tie-ups with regional parties (resurgent after the UP-Bihar bypolls). Balancing everyone’s voices did take time, said a young leader on the learning curve.

The text of the four resolutions — political, economic, international and the one specifically on agriculture, job creation and poverty eradication, to be adopted in the two days of the plenary session, also came up for discussion, as also the security situation of the country. Once the forte of Narasimha Rao and Pranab Mukherjee, the job of fine-tuning the language of a resolution has now fallen on Anand Sharma.

The plenary session, which will be inaugurated by the new President’s speech, is likely to see former chief Sonia Gandhi recede to the background. “She’ll not want to overshadow” her son in any way, even though the art of alliance making, which will either make or mar 2019 for the Congress, has been left to her.

The other key function of the plenary session, which is the selection/election of a new CWC, has been deferred. Though Rahul Gandhi would have liked to open the party’s highest decision-making body to contest, he has been convinced otherwise. A nomination route is what expected, “to allow the new chief choose his own team”, a senior leader said.

Already some heat is being generated in the background —the new president has struck off names of old Congressmen from the lists of AICC delegates.

“Only 40 somethings or below are welcome,” a leader quipped. If there are any fireworks in the next two days, it’s likely to be on this issue and not on the party’s revival plan. Or on the how-to-defeat-Modi strategy.