Cong heads for ’09 polls looking at ’99 no-go panel

If the fate of the report of A K Antony Introspection Committee - set up after the Congress’s debacle in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls - is any indicator...

If the fate of the report of A K Antony Introspection Committee — set up after the Congress’s debacle in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls — is any indicator, the latest exercise by the party to set up another committee, headed by the same leader, to suggest a roadmap for the ensuing elections is all set to end up as a mere window-dressing exercise. The party leadership never followed recommendations of the Introspection Committee, though most of them had been accepted by the Congress Working Committee in its meeting on December 11,1999. The report was never made public.

One of the recommendations was to constitute general bodies at the district/ state/ national levels comprising active Youth Congress members. These members could then “democratically elect” their presidents and office-bearers. The CWC had accepted this recommendation. But contrary to this, AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi selects state Youth Congress presidents and aspiring candidates are shortlisted by a panel of senior leaders.

Incidentally, three out of 11 members of the Introspection Committee have found place in the latest seven-member committee — Antony, Mani Shankar Aiyar and P R Dasmunsi. The earlier committee had followed a comprehensive consultation process by visiting several states; the new committee, on the other hand, will wrap up the exercise in 15 days after three meetings — the first of which was held on Thursday.

The Introspection Committee had recommended that the party should announce its candidates for Assembly elections a month in advance, and for Lok Sabha elections three months in advance. For the constituencies where the party had lost repeatedly, the recommendation was to announce candidates six months in advance. But the Congress continues to announce candidates till the last day of nomination.

Again, the committee had recommended the formation of Parliamentary/ Assembly Constituency Congress Committees to constitute panels of candidates. The panel of names would then be forwarded to Pradesh Election Committee, which would recommend one name “as far as possible” and “in no case” more than two names. The implementation of this recommendation is anybody’s guess.

Stressing on media management, the committee had suggested that “professional TV training” was a must for Congress leaders at the Centre. As for the need to co-opt opinion makers, the intelligentsia should be given access to Congress President, it had suggested. Special efforts are required to reach out to well-educated and upwardly mobile young SCs/ OBCs and women “who could be nurtured to leadership position in the party”, the panel said. The 1999 committee had stressed on the need to have “dedicated full-time workers to combat cadre-based communal organisations”. Revamp and re-orient Seva Dal to be “our cadre-based vanguard”, it had added.

Suggesting that the Congress should remain a left-of-centre party, the committee had said: “There must be a definite demarcation between the party’s left-wing approach to economic reforms and the BJP’s right-wing approach to economic reforms.”