With an eye on the Bihar Assembly elections which are just round the corner, the Congress is going to hold a meeting of the extended Congress Working Committee (CWC) in Patna on September 24.
The agenda of this meeting of the CWC, the Congress’s top decision-making body, will be deliberations on the Bihar poll campaign and issues like alleged “vote chori” and the Election Commission’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar electoral rolls.
Besides Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, the extended CWC huddle will be attended by the body’s permanent and special invitees, Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chiefs and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leaders including Chief Ministers from across the country.
The last extended CWC meeting was held in Ahmedabad in April this year during the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session there.
The Congress’s Patna conclave is taking place three weeks after Rahul Gandhi’s 16-day “Voter Adhikar Yatra” against the ruling BJP and the EC over “vote chori” and the SIR came to an end after covering 25 of Bihar’s 38 districts, which was said to have drawn crowds and enthused the party’s rank and file.
It is also being held amid seat-sharing discussions for Bihar’s 243 Assembly seats between the allies of the Opposition Mahagathbandhan led by the RJD.
Congress sources said a CWC meeting is being held in Bihar after decades. “The idea of holding the extended CWC meet in Bihar is to give a message to the party leaders and workers in the state that the entire AICC is behind them,” a Congress insider said.
“Among the main issues to be taken up during the extended CWC meeting will be ‘vote chori’ and SIR – and how the party will take them to the people down to the grassroots level. This will be a great moment for workers and leaders of Bihar to express themselves in front of the Congress top leadership,” he said.
“Other issues that will be discussed at the CWC will include how the Congress and its allies in the Opposition INDIA bloc stood united during the Monsoon Session of Parliament and stalled its proceedings in protest against the Bihar SIR,” the party insider said.
Soon after holding a press conference last month where he accused the EC and the BJP of allegedly perpetrating “vote chori” in elections, citing the “theft” of 1,00,250 votes in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in the Bangalore Central constituency in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Rahul had undertaken his Bihar Yatra during which he used a slogan “vote chor, gaddi chhodh”, targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A Bihar Congress leader said it was a “good decision” to hold the CWC in the state on the eve of the elections. “Not just our party, but other INDIA allies will also get a message that the Congress is serious about Bihar. It will yield good results,” said the leader.
Congress whip in the Lok Sabha, Manickam Tagore, a CWC member, told The Indian Express that the extended CWC meeting would “galvanise” the party cadre in the state. “We did an extended CWC meet in Hyderabad before the Telangana elections in 2023. It will be a message to every leader in Bihar that the party’s top leadership from across India stands with the people of Bihar,” said Tagore.
The newly-created Bihar Congress Pradesh Election Committee (PEC) is holding its first meeting Thursday to discuss seat-sharing and the names of probable candidates for the upcoming polls. The PEC will then submit its report to the Congress high command.
Congress sources said the party may pare down its 70-seat demand – the number of seats it had contested in the 2020 polls, winning just 19 – for the sake of accommodating new allies in the Mahagathbandhan fold, which include smaller parties like Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), Pashupati Kumar Paras-headed Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP) and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led JMM.
