After a massive defeat in the Delhi elections, the Congress leaders have started questioning the Congress Working Committee (CWC). On February 20 Senior MP Shashi Tharoor also urged the CWC to hold leadership elections to energise party workers.
Crux of the Matter
Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, tweeted his views by quoting former MP and Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit who had openly criticised the Congress leadership.
I’m actually feeling rather dismayed by our senior leaders. Most of them have been former chief ministers, even some of our current CMs who are very senior, I think it is time for them to come up and go the extra mile for their party. – Sandeep Dikshit
The Congress had ruled Delhi for three consecutive terms till 2013 with Sheila Dikshit as Chief Minister. Not only could they not win even a single seat in the recent elections but also its candidates lost their deposits in 63 seats.
In the previous week, Jairam Ramesh compared the Delhi result to ‘coronavirus’ for the Congress and had said that some in the party still behave like ministers even after six years out of power.
Former Union Minister Manish Tewari had recently said that the party needs to think about reorienting its economic philosophy which continues to be fairly socialistic and bring clarity on the question of secularism and its brand of nationalism. Senior leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia also have suggested that the party needs to reinvent itself.
Sandeep Dikshit in an interview said that the party’s biggest challenge was the leadership question. He said that Rahul Gandhi had asked senior leaders to elect a new president but they failed. It is time for Amarinder Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Kamal Nath, AK Antony, P Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid, Ahmed Patel to intellectually contribute and get into leadership selection. He said, “there are at least six-eight Congress leaders capable of leading the party, but sometimes you want inaction because you don’t want a certain action to happen”.
After the Delhi results a large section of Congress leaders reacted by openly congratulating Aam Aadmi Party and Arvind Kejriwal for defeating the BJP. The other section of Congress lamented its own leaders praising a rival party that grew at the cost of the Congress.
Curiopedia
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is the executive committee of the Indian National Congress formed in December 1920 at Nagpur session of INC which was headed by C. Vijayaraghavachariar. It typically consists of fifteen members elected from the All India Congress Committee. It is headed by the Working President which currently is Sonia Gandhi. In the period prior to independence in 1947, the Working Committee was the centre of power, and the Working President was frequently more active than the Congress President. In the period after 1967, when the Congress Party split for the first time the power of the Working Committee declined; but Indira Gandhi’s triumph in 1971 led to a re-centralisation of power away from the states and the All-India Congress Committee and caused the Working Committee in Delhi to once again be the paramount decision-making body of the party. More Info
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