Rahul pushes for increasing party's base

With Congress reeling under a series of poll reverses, Rahul Gandhi today met senior party leaders here to discuss how to check the slide and set a number of goals like speedy membership by providing "incentives" to expand the party's base.
At the brain-storming meeting of the Election Authority of the party, Gandhi is learnt to have expressed his concern over the tardy pace of organizational polls and asked young AICC secretaries to take responsibility to ensure that it gets the needed momentum in states.
Re-introducing active membership concept, common membership across all the wings of Congress and enhanching the representation ratio of SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities in Committees are some of the measures that were debated threadbare during the meeting in which Gandhi was present for one and half hour.

Thrust was laid on opening up the membership enrolment by introducing multiple channels like web-based application and smart phone application as well as providing "incentives" for a member who enrolls at least 25 members.
From the meeting, coming a day before Delhi goes to vote, it emerged that the Congress Vice President was focussing on long-term strategies.
Party General Secretary in-charge Organization Janardan Dwivedi could not attend the meeting as he was down with viral fever while some other general secretaries also failed to turn up.
The membership drive, which was earlier set to have ended on December 31 of last year, was extended for two months is to wrap up this month-end with Gandhi not quite keen on further extending it.

The Central Election Authority headed by senior leader Mullapalli Rmachandran submitted some proposals and amendments to better the organizational functioning of the party, which was considered by the apex decision making body of the party, Congress Working Committee in a meeting on January 13.