Arrangements ready for AICC plenary

Elaborate arrangements have been made for the 82nd plenary of the All India Congress Committee(AICC), which is being held from January 21-23 at Hyderabad.

The sprawling GMC Balayogi stadium complex, the venue of the event, which has been christened as Rajiv Nagar by the organisers, has been handed over to the Special Protection Group (SPG) marking the completion of the arrangements for the meeting.

Besides some hotels, the Congress has also taken over several educational institutions and other establishments to accommodate the party delegates who will be attending the three-day event.

Around 3,000 people have been engaged in providing necessary services to the delegates during the plenary. About 69 arches have been erected at the main junctions in the city, which are named after all those party leaders who held the post of AICC president.

The Prime Minister's Offices (PMO) and the office of UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, will be shifted to Hyderabad during the event and the both of them are expected to stay at a private guest house near the venue.

The organisers are taking the help of IT to webcast the entire proceedings of the plenary and set up an online registration facility. Photo IDs for all the delegates are being prepared with the help of computers incorporating all the information for ready reference.

While over 250 media passes have already been issued by the AICC, the state Congress party has received 500 applications from the local media for passes.

Nearly 150 computers are being provided to media persons with broadband internet connectivity for sending reports on the event besides a twenty-four-hour call office to answer queries regarding the arrangements from anywhere.

The state Congress leaders are terming it as a historic event, which, according to them, is going to give a new thrust and direction to the development of the nation. With the talk of Rahul Gandhi and chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy being inducted into the Congress Working Committee (CWC) doing the rounds among the party circles here, the event assumes significance.

According to Keshava Rao, there will be a fourth resolution to be adopted on agriculture and Panchayat Raj apart from the usual resolutions on economic, political and foreign affairs. The number of delegates attending the event has been restricted to 10,000 on account of security reasons, he said.

As the party from the host state, the Andhra Pradesh Congress contingent would be the biggest among all the states as the AICC has decided to allow 1500 Andhra delegates who would be mostly the elected representatives of the party in addition to over 600 PCC delegates. Which means that the total number of delegates would be about 12,000.

The CWC meeting is scheduled to be held on January 21 to finalise the resolutions and the subject committee will meet to discuss the draft resolutions the next day. Actual plenary is scheduled to take place on January 23, on the third-day of the event where Sonia Gandhi will deliver her presidential address. All the four resolutions will be placed before the plenary on the third-day.

More than the talk of its role in freedom struggle, the event is expected to project Congress party's role in the nation building process in the post independent era with the stress on reforms with human face and sustaining higher economic growth to achieve equitable development.

A pylon, dedicated to the Congressmen who participated in the national reconstruction in the post independent era, is being erected here near the place where the plenary of the Congress was held in 1953 under the presidentship of the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The pylon will be unveiled by Sonia Gandhi. She is also expected to lay the foundation stone for a new office building for the party's state headquarters beside Gandhi Bhavan.