New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi will start rolling out his plan to revamp the Congress organisation by holding an interactive session with around 800 district unit heads in April first week. Having shrunk across several states since losing power at the Centre in 2014, the Congress had recently decided to revive the old practice of empowered district units.
The move to decentralise decision-making will help the grand old party amplify its message across the country and be counted as a strong main opposition party in Parliament. According to party insiders, besides Rahul and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, other senior leaders will also interact with the district unit heads over three days to obtain ground-level feedback and prepare a plan to boost organisational strength.
The decision to revive the district units across the country was taken after a seven-hour-long brainstorming session that Rahul and Kharge held with the senior leaders in Delhi on February 19. Since then, the newly appointed state in-charges in Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Punjab have interacted with the state teams on the proposed organisational revamp.
Himachal Pradesh is ruled by Congress but Kharge disbanded the state unit last year to pave the way for a revamped team, which will be finalised soon.
“The district unit is the backbone of the party. District leaders belong to different factions and the move to empower the local units will bring them together. During the coming interaction, the high command will get a chance to hear directly from the ground workers. The leadership will get a firsthand assessment of where the party stands in a state. As I understand, a new system is being developed, which will allow the district heads to directly send their reports to the AICC. The move will make the district teams active and a regular monitoring of their reports would also bring accountability into the party system,” AICC secretary in-charge of Himachal Pradesh Chetan Chauhan told ETV Bharat.
“The Sukhvinder Sukhu government has done good work over the past years. A strong state unit will be able to explain the achievements to the people, for instance, the old pension scheme for the ex-staff. The ultimate goal of a party is to come to power. So stronger local teams will help the party achieve that goal. In states where we are in opposition, stronger local teams will carry out the agitational agenda,” said Chauhan.
According to the AICC secretary in-charge of Madhya Pradesh Chandan Yadav, the focus of the organisational revamp will be on bringing forward persons who strongly believe in party ideology.
“The ideological component of the local level leaders will strengthen the organisation. This will also be done upwards at the state level. This revamp is a major exercise and will be carried out around the year,” Yadav told ETV Bharat.
Besides Himachal Pradesh, Kharge had also disbanded the unit in BJP-ruled Odisha last year. New in-charge Ajay Kumar Lallu and state unit chief Bhakta Charan Das are now in the process of revamping the organisation there and will soon launch a statewide agitation to flag the issue of crimes against women.
“Crimes against women are occurring regularly because of the inaction of the state government. The government should have dealt with the menace strongly. We have set up a fact-finding committee to assess the situation. The local units are being recast to make the party stronger,” Das told ETV Bharat.
Read more: Back To Basics For Congress: After Debacle, Party To Breathe Life Into Grassroots
