Sonia to convene Cong CMs' conclave

Concerned about the impact of price rise on the party's image among 'aam admi', Congress President Sonia Gandhi has decided to convene a meeting of the chief ministers of Congress-ruled states.

The meeting will be convened some time in July, although the date and the venue are yet to be decided, top party sources told Business Standard.

"It has been a long time since the last conclave in Chandigarh (held in October last year). The Congress president is, therefore, planning to hold another conclave soon - in fact, this month itself - to discuss the progress of flagship programmes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and other social sector schemes," said sources.

This will be the second such conclave since the party came to power two years back and the seventh in the series of such conclaves started in 2001 by the Congress president.

The decision to hold a CMs' conclave comes a day after the Congress Working Committee (CWC) expressed 'deep concern' about the inflationary trend and urged the government to come out with an effective mechanism to check price rise.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram had told CWC members that the Centre had already taken a slew of measures on both demand and supply fronts and advised the states to launch operations against hoarders.

Senior party leader Digvijay Singh had quoted Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar as saying that had the government offered Rs 1,100 per quintal- the price paid for imported foodgrains- as procurement price to farmers, things would have been different. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee had shot it down saying that nobody had prevented Pawar from doing it.

The Congress High Command was said to have taken a serious note of the views expressed at the CWC meeting. Sonia, therefore, decided to hold consultations with the CMs also to ensure that at least the Congress-ruled states worked in tandem with the central government to control the prices immediately, said sources.

Going by past trends, the Congress High Command is likely to use the CMs' conclave not only to address immediate concerns like price rise but also to outline a broad parameters of both administrative and political dos-and-don'ts for the CMs to follow.

Internal bickerings in the party - the most recent being the one between Haryana PCC president Bhajan Lal's son Kuldip Bishnoi and CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda over the SEZ project - are also likely to be addressed by the Congress president at the CMs' conclave.