AICC meet to be held in March

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday indicated of holding an AICC meeting expectedly in March next against the backdrop of the electoral setbacks it had received and a debate going on within the party about ideological and leadership issues and a strategy to face the political challenge ahead.

“The AICC session would certainly be held during the Budget Session of Parliament,” a party official said.

The last AICC meeting was held in New Delhi in January this year before the Lok Sabha elections. The AICC plenary will have to be called next year after the organisational elections, insiders said. The Congress president’s election is expected in July-August.

The Congress’ rank and file is confused not because of the crushing defeats in the general election and the Assembly polls held in 2013 and 2014, but the signals it has been receiving from the leadership on key issues.

“We don’t have any idea whether the leadership wants the party to be run like a voluntary organisation, an NGO or like a political party. Besides, there is confusion about who would lead the party between Soniaji and Rahulji,” they said.

If the Congress’ stand on “secularism” is being seen as “pro-minorities” and being projected by its political adversaries as “anti-Hindus”, regional parties who have created a space for themselves by stopping the Congress and the BJP in key states accuse the Congress for following the “soft Hindutva” line.

The veteran Congress leader, the late V.N. Gadgil, had raised the issue of why Hindus were deserting the Congress in a paper he had written after the Congress’ third successive defeat in 1999 after the 1998 and 1996 Lok Sabha elections.