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Days after former finance minister P Chidambaram said that the ordinary Congressman was demoralised and that the party leadership should take a more proactive role, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi held a review meeting on Tuesday.
In his first formal interaction with top party leaders here after the defeat of the party in the Assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana, Gandhi harked back at an old theme: organisational elections should be utilised to "reinvigorate and rejuvenate" the party following the debacle in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
He said full powers have been given to the party's Central Election Authority, headed by Mullappally Ramachandran, to make the organisational elections truly effective and foolproof. Gandhi's remarks came even as the Congress continued to face a trail of defeat and there is a buzz about the possibility of sweeping changes in the party in the near future.
Organisational weakness has been cited as one of the major reasons for the defeat of the Congress starting from 2010 Assembly elections in Bihar, also in the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2012.
It was again identified as one of the factors in the defeat of party in this year's Lok Sabha polls, apart from price rise and perception of corruption, which were referred to as the main factors of the party's poor show. The process for organisational elections in the party has begun, scheduled to culminate with the election of a new party president in 2014.
General secretaries in-charge of states and a number of Pradesh Congress Committee chiefs, besides members of the election authority participated in Tuesday's meeting.
For long, Gandhi has been pressing for a larger say to grass-root workers in the election of party office bearers. Ramachandran, a former Union minister, had claimed that Congress would have a "100 per cent transparent" organisational elections this time.
The talk about bringing in "fresh leadership" at all levels has already been doing rounds in the party. Last week, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had done a stock-taking exercise following the party's loss in the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly polls even as a clamour for 'course correction' grows within its ranks in the wake of the dip in electoral fortunes.
