Congress president sonia gandhi has decided to convene an All-India Congress Committee (AICC) session here in the third week of October. Her son Rahul Gandhi, recently made an AICC general-secretary and inducted to the Congress Working Committee, is likely to occupy centrestage.The tentative schedule for the session is October 15-16, but will be finalised on Sonia’s return from New York this week.The scheduling is significant: the session begins the day after the UPA-Left panel on the Indo-US nuclear deal will meet for the second time. Sources in the party said the nuclear deal will figure prominently in the agenda.The Left parties have said the panel’s meetings on October 5 and October 14 could prove crucial for the survival of the UPA government at the Centre. The government also has to take a call soon on negotiating India-specific safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).There’s no change in the Left’s opposition to the deal, as has emerged from the deliberations at the three-day CPM Central Committee meeting in Kolkata. And the Congress looks determined not to make any compromise on the nuclear deal: already, it has signalled its readiness to face elections, effecting a major AICC reshuffle and changing PCC chiefs in four states last week.But the decision on the AICC session is yet to be formally communicated to party office-bearers as the dates are still not finalised. A senior party functionary said Sonia Gandhi would take account of the forthcoming Navratri festival while deciding on the dates. The likely venue, he said, would be the Siri Fort Auditorium.Earlier, Rahul had declined a bigger role within the party at the AICC plenary session in Hyderabad in January 2006.
