Working_President

Congress Working Committee

Congress Working Committee

Executive committee of the Indian National Congress (INC)

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is the executive committee of the Indian National Congress. It was formed in December 1920 at Nagpur session of INC which was headed by C. Vijayaraghavachariar. It is composed of senior party leaders and is responsible for taking decisions on important policy and organizational matters, as well as guiding and directing the party's activities and campaigns at the national level. It typically consists of fifteen members elected from the All India Congress Committee (AICC). The CWC is headed by the party president, who is elected by the members of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), the party's central governing body.

Mahatma Gandhi attends a Congress Working Committee meeting at Anand Bhavan, Allahabad; Vallabhbhai Patel to the left, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit to the right, January 1940.

The Working Committee has had different levels of power in the party at different times. In the period prior to Indian independence in 1947, the Working Committee was the centre of power, and the Working President was frequently more active than the Congress President. In the period after 1967, when the Congress Party split for the first time (between factions loyal to Indira Gandhi and those led by the Syndicate of regional leaders including Kamaraj, Prafulla Chandra Sen, Ajoy Mukherjee, and Morarji Desai), the power of the Working Committee declined; but Indira Gandhi's triumph in 1971 led to a re-centralisation of power away from the states and the All-India Congress Committee and caused the Working Committee in Delhi to once again be the paramount decision-making body of the party.[1] The centralised nature of Congress decision making has since caused observers in the states to informally describe instructions from Delhi as coming from the "High Command".

Composition of Congress Working Committee

Sources:[2][3][4]

President

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Members[5]

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Permanent Invitees

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Special Invitees

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Criticism

The Congress has not held internal elections for CWC for nearly 20 years and the last elections were held in 1998.[8] In 2017 Election Commission ordered it to hold internal elections[9] but as of 2020 no elections were held.[10] When Congress was trying to forge an alliance with ideologically opposite Shiv Sena in Maharashtra in 2019, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam publicly urged Sonia Gandhi to dissolve the CWC, saying "they cannot be trusted anymore."[11] [12] In 2020 a paper by Observer Research Foundation calls a large number of CWC members "unprincipled, opportunists and self-serving individuals for whom self-interest is paramount."[13]

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "Towards a More Competitive Party System in India", Ram Joshi and Kirtidev Desai, Asian Survey, Vol. 18, No. 11. (Nov., 1978), pp. 1091-1116.
  2. [2]
    "Indian National Congress".
  3. [3]
    "Analysis: New Congress Working Committee - Focus on Polls, Not Rocking Boat".
  4. [4]
    Phukan, Sandeep (20 August 2023). "Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot included in revamped Congress Working Committee". The Hindu.
  5. [5]
    "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee".
  6. [6]
    "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 20 July 2019.
  7. [7]
    "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 17 July 2019.
  8. [8]
    "Nobody But Rahul, Says Congress Leader Whose Father Ran vs Sonia Gandhi". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  9. [9]
    "Election Commission Tells Congress to Hold Internal Elections by June 30". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  10. [10]
    Pankaj Vohra (8 August 2020). "EC can freeze Congress symbol or initiate action if the party remains leaderless". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  11. [11]
    "Congress "Defamed", Rahul Gandhi Should Return to Lead: Sanjay Nirupam After Maharashtra Twist". Archived from the original on 6 February 2020.
  12. [12]
    "Old Grudge, Unfulfilled Demand: Why Rahul Gandhi Remained Absent from Cong's Meet on Delhi Riots". 26 February 2020. Archived from the original on 26 February 2020.
  13. [13]
    "Congress moving towards extinction?". Archived from the original on 14 March 2020.
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