The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body, will meet on Sunday to introspect on the recent debacle in the Assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Uttar Pradesh. Ahead of the meeting, many members expressed reservations on the utility of such a meeting, since the party is yet to take cognisance of Ashok Chavan committee report which analysed the reasons for the defeat in Kerala and West Bengal in May last year.
The meeting will be attended by extended CWC which has 68 members including the in–charges of the five States.
After the party drew a blank in West Bengal and could not stop Pinarayi Vijayan from returning to power in Kerala, it had set up a five–member committee under former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan.
The committee included Manish Tewari who is part of the reformist group and Lok Sabha MP Jothimani who is considered a Rahul Gandhi loyalist.
The mandate of the committee was not only to find reasons for the defeat and suggest corrective measures but also to bring in overall reforms. It dealt with organisational shortcomings and also the lack of funds that the party is facing. The report also sought opinions and did an in–depth analysis of possible and future alliances with other parties.
The committee submitted its report in July to interim president Sonia Gandhi after reaching out to more than 200 leaders. A detailed questionnaire was sent out to the party leaders with 80 questions.
The report was never tabled or discussed in any subsequent meetings.
In the last CWC held on October 16 last year, senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, according to sources, had asked about the report but his questions were met with “stoic silence”. “Even the summary of the report was not verbally shared with the CWC,” one of the members said.
The pro-Grandhis camp, however, claims that the report was never meant for the consumption of the CWC or any other leaders. “The report has been submitted to party president. Currently, there is a deep distrust over many CWC members within the party and one can never be sure that such a report if shared with the CWC, will remain private,” a Congress leader said.
