Congress to hold 3-day Chintan Shivir next month, forms 6 panels to study key issues

Brainstorming session in Udaipur will be attended by around 400 members from across India. Congress will deliberate upon its broad strategy for 2024.

Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi during the CWC meeting at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi, on 13 March 2022 | File photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint

New Delhi: The Congress has announced that it will hold a three-day brainstorming session, or Chintan Shivir, from 13 to 15 May in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

The event will be attended by around 400 party members from across the country, who will deliberate upon the party’s broad strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The party has also announced six panels that will lead the discussion on their respective subjects. Each panel is headed by a senior leader.

The idea of the session was floated by the party after a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), its highest decision-making body, in March after it suffered crushing defeats in all five states that went to the polls.

Coordination panels

The six coordination panels will “prepare papers and lead discussion” on the subjects they have been assigned — political issues, social justice and empowerment, economy, organisation, farmers and agriculture, youth empowerment.

While senior leader and MP Mallikarjun Kharge is the convener of the political panel, Salman Khurshid will lead the panel on social justice and empowerment. Former finance minister P. Chidambaram will be the convener of the economy panel, while Mukul Wasnik will chair the panel on organisation.

Former Haryana CM Bhupender Hooda is in-charge of the panel on farmers and agriculture, while newly appointed Punjab Congress president, 44-year-old Amrinder Brar Raja Warring, will head the panel on youth empowerment.

Besides the strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the panels will reflect on the current political and economic situation in the country and the “challenges they pose to the society”, said the Congress in a statement.

“Issues relating to the welfare and well-being of farm labourers, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, OBCs, religious and linguistic minorities and women social justice and empowerment and youth will also be discussed in detail. In addition, matters relating to organisational restructuring and strengthening will be examined,” the statement added.

(Edited by Manoj Ramachandran)