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The Congress has set out to overhaul its organisational structure, bringing key changes to its district committees and how they function. As the District Congress Committees (DCCs) have become defunct and poorly-run, the Congress has conceptualised a new format for the appointment of their leadership.
On Saturday, the Congress announced the names of the observers who are meant to oversee the changes and ensure smooth functioning of the DCCs in Gujarat. The list of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) observers for 41 DCCs in Gujarat include MPs Manickam Tagore, Praniti Shinde, Niraj Dange, Sukhdev Bhagat and Imran Masood as well as senior leaders like Balasaheb Thorat, BK Hariprasad, Harish Chaudhary, Meenakshi Natarajan, Girish Chodankar, Vijay Inder Singla, and Ajay Kumar Lallu.
The district committees of the Congress directly oversee the functioning and activities of its booth, block, mandal units — the ground level workforce of the party that is responsible for its campaigns and outreach. This is the level at which the cadre and base for a party is built.
However, over the years the DCCs became dysfunctional in many states due to the prevalent practice of leaders lobbying to make their loyalists district presidents. These district-level leaders would, in turn, crowd the committees with people of their choice.
In Haryana, for example, the state Congress unit has not been able to put in place an organisational structure at the block and district levels for close to a decade because of factionalism and infighting.
In Kerala, there has been a practice of appointing district presidents on factional lines. For years, the party unit in the state has been divided into the “I” and “A” groups. The “I” group was formed in 1978 in opposition to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. These distinctions remained despite leadership changes over the years and the two groups have been sharing the 14 districts in Kerala between them.
With practices such as these, the district units became heavily polarised. For example, leaders who lost the district president race would end up not cooperating with the chosen leader or would be sidelined.
The AICC now plans to set up a political affairs committee in each district. This committee is meant to include all the prominent party leaders of that district in the decision-making process. Through this, the party hopes to iron out differences that may potentially arise.
The party also wants to set up a panel — comprising one observer from the AICC and four leaders from the state Congress — for each district. The panel is expected to hold a workshop and seek inputs from district level leaders as well as senior state leaders. It will then sit down with candidates seeking to be district presidents. Party leaders said the idea is to pick the “most capable leader” as the district president.
The experiment’s pilot will be launched in Gujarat soon — and Saturday’s announcement for observers is a step in that process — and would be taken to other states depending on the outcome. The Congress says the entire process would take at least a year.
“After the Gujarat experiment, we will be able to see whether the model is foolproof. If there are any improvements to be made, we can do that,” one leader said.
Apart from keeping the district units in place and ensuring they run smoothly, the Congress plans to completely redefine their role.
“There will be new power and responsibilities for the DCC. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and (senior leader) Rahul Gandhi would like to have a day-long workshop in each state. We are going to start from Gujarat,” Venugopal said at the recent AICC session.
In the run up to the AICC session, both Kharge and Rahul met the DCC presidents from across the country in Delhi. After one of the meetings, Gandhi said the party is now hoping to make “district presidents the foundation of the party”.
Sources said the Congress now wants to involve district presidents in the selection of candidates for the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. “The idea is for district presidents to be part of the meetings of the Central Election Committee (CEC) that decides the candidates for these polls… They will be part of the Screening Committees and can even be asked to join the CEC meetings when candidates are decided in their districts,” a senior party leader said.
Within a year, the leader said, the Congress wants to appoint all DCC presidents as well as the booth, mandal and block unit chiefs.
“These leaders will have to make appointments (of office-bearers) impartially and strictly under AICC guidelines. They have to build the organisation… Moreover, I want to add that those who cannot help the party should take rest,” Kharge had outlined at the Congress session.
Despite the overhaul, the top AICC leadership will not give up its final power to appoint the DCC presidents.
The centralisation of party affairs has been a major concern in the Congress.
A demand of the 23 senior leaders, popularly known as G-23, who sought changes to the Congress structure in 2020 was to delegate the appointment of the DCC presidents to the state Congress units.
In their letter to then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, they wrote that the appointments of leaders at the state and district levels were often “unduly delayed” with the state Congress chiefs “not given freedom to take organisational decisions”.
They also underlined that the district level committees were not inclusive and representative of the demographics of the state and lacked autonomy.
“Given the geographical spread and diversity of India, over-centralisation of the organisation and micro-management has always proven to be counterproductive. Therefore, the practice of appointing DCC Presidents / Office Bearers of Department and Cells from the AICC should be stopped henceforth. DCC Presidents should be appointed from the State Capital by the In-charge General Secretary in coordination with PCC Presidents,” they wrote at the time.
