The single consolidated resolution document to emerge from the Congress party’s brainstorming ‘Chintan shivir’ at Jaipur later this week will be entitled the ‘Jaipur Sankalp’.
The deliberations at the two-day session to decide the “future course of action” will form the basis. In a first for the party, the 300-odd delegates, half of which will comprise youth members, will be divided into ‘break out groups’ to intensively discuss five selected topics over the two days before they present their final reports. In place of separate economic, political and social resolutions as in earlier ‘chintan shivirs’, the single consolidated document to emerge will be publicly discussed at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) meeting on the third day.
Party sources say the delegates have been divided into the five ‘break out groups’ of 60-80 members each in line with their choice. The groups will be discussing topics ‘Emerging political challenges, emerging socio- economic challenges, empowerment of women, India and the world and organisational strength’. The group on agriculture has been reportedly merged with socio-economic challenges.
In a departure from the shivirs held at Shimla in 2003 and Panchmarhi in 1998, before the final resolution is made public at the AICC on January 20, the document will be taken up for discussion at the extended Congress Working Committee (CWC), the highest decision making body of the party and ratified.
The party’s media interface incharge, Janardan Dwivedi, said the committee heads will personally be meeting party chief Sonia Gandhi to apprise her of the discussions before these are presented to the CWC. With Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vision’ apparently the cornerstone of this shivir, sources disclose he will not only be addressing the five groups but the CWC, too.
The importance given to the discussion in these sub-groups is understandable, as it is this ‘Jaipur Sankalp’ that will chart the course of action in the run to the 2014 general election.
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While the 2003 shivir in Shimla resolved the Congress was open to coalition politics, the prior one in 1998 had decided against political alliances. Congress leaders reveal the party is still swaying between these two extremes in the draft paper on ‘Emerging political challenges’. The view emerging is while the party in several states such as Tamil Nadu and Bihar has a poor organisational base and, therefore, has to keep the existing alliances, on the other hand its experiences with parties like the Trinamool Congress have underlined the need to also build its own organisation.
This shivir, the party desperately hopes, will chart the path to take the party on a victory march in the several state elections culminating with the general election.