2022 polls: Sonia Gandhi chairs key Congress meet, Navjot Sidhu attends

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 26

Days after the Congress Working Committee approved an ambitious programme to train party workers and leaders in its ideology among other things, a key meeting of top organisational leaders has begun here to take the matter forward and discuss the upcoming elections.

All AICC general secretary in charge of states and party unit presidents, including Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu, are attending the meeting being chaired by party chief Sonia Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Vadra are also present.

A major agenda item in the meeting would be state elections due in 2022 with the Congress facing an uphill task in Punjab, where intra-state unit tensions are evident and growing.

In signs of a stabilising Punjab unit, Sidhu is attending the meeting signalling that his pending issues with respect to state affairs have been resolved.

This is the first official meeting of the Congress Sidhu is attending since he resigned as PCC chief on September 29.

The party later wooed him back.

Elections in Goa, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Manipur scheduled for early 2022 will also be discussed today along with key campaign strategies and messaging.

The Congress is particularly concerned about the situation in Punjab, where the ongoing public war of words between former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh and a host of party leaders, including state home minister Sukhjinder Randhawa and Navjot Kaur, the wife of PCC chief Navjot Sidhu, has become a matter of worry for the party high command.

Amarinder is likely to announce his new party in Chandigarh on Wednesday.

Several leaders, meanwhile, have voiced their concerns over the Punjab affairs in private.

Punjab is one of the three states apart from Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where the Congress is in power on its own.

AICC general secretary organisation KC Venugopal in a letter to state general secretaries, in charge and PCC chiefs earlier said about today’s meeting, “The meeting has been called to discuss the membership campaign, preparations for the Jan Jagran Abhiyan and proposed training programme and forthcoming assembly elections.”

The training programme cleared by the CWC chaired by party chief Sonia Gandhi is currently a major topic of discussion in party circles with respect to its scope.

The CWC had stressed the need for regular training programmes for party workers and leaders in Congress ideology, expectations from a Congress worker, grassroots messaging, election management, government’s failures and countering propaganda of the BJP and the RSS.

Party sources said an orientation for trainers would be held at Sevagram, Wardha, between November 12 and 15 and after that the programme would be held continuously to prepare the Congress to take on the BJP, and the saffron election machinery.

The meeting will also discuss the public awareness campaign which the CWC announced on inflation.

The campaign is slated for between November 14 and 29.