Bihar Election: Congress Working Committee to meet in Patna for the first time since 1940

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is set to meet in Patna on September 24. This is the first meeting of the grand old party’s top decision making body in Bihar’s capital city since 1940.

Top leadership of the Congress party including president Mallikarjun Kharge, former president Sonia Gandhi and leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi is set to participate in the meeting held ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections.

According to the party sources, it would be an extended Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, with permanent and special invitees, party’s chief ministers, Pradesh Congress Committee presidents and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leaders participating.

Sources said a couple of resolutions are expected to be passed at the crucial meeting with an eye on the upcoming assembly polls.

The CWC meeting will be held at 10 am at Sadaqat Ashram, the Congress party’s Bihar state head office. This is the first time in the post-independence era that the party is holding a meeting of its top-decision making body in Bihar, according to party leaders.

The focus is likely to be on Bihar, the party’s campaign strategy, future polls and ramping up the attack on the BJP over alleged “vote chori”, sources said.

They said a strong message will be sent out by the CWC on the “vote chori” issue and against the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, news agency PTI reported.

The meeting comes amid seat-sharing talks between Mahagathbandhan allies and just days after Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ against alleged “vote chori” and the SIR of electoral rolls that enthused the party’s rank and file in the state.

The meeting also comes days after Gandhi held its second press conference on alleged “vote chori”, stepping up his attack on the issue.

Gandhi had accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of protecting those who “destroyed democracy”. To buttress his allegation, he had cited data from a Karnataka assembly constituency to claim that votes of Congress supporters were being systematically deleted.

The Election Commission dubbed the allegations “incorrect and baseless”.

During a press conference here on Monday, AICC Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru asserted that Congress was fighting “the second war of Independence” in Bihar, a reason why the meeting has been scheduled in the state.

The Congress leader alleged that the ruling BJP at the Centre was involved in “vote theft”, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “like a student who does not study hard, but takes recourse to unfair means for doing well in examinations”.

Asserting that Bihar had become “the centre of national politics”, Allavaru said, “We are fighting the second war of Independence in the state, a reason why the CWC meeting is being held here.” In reply to another query, he said talks on seat-sharing are being held on a positive note in the INDIA bloc.

“We will soon come out with a viable formula. On the other hand, we find the BJP-led NDA in disarray,” the Allavaru had said.

On whether RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav will be named as the chief ministerial candidate of the INDIA bloc with a stamp of approval from the Congress, Allavaru had said, “At an appropriate time, all alliance partners will sit together and decide”.

Bihar Congress president Rajesh Kumar has hailed the upcoming CWC meeting as a historic event, pointing out that this was the first time such a meeting was taking place in Bihar in the post-independence era.

“It is a historic moment for us that Sadaqat Ashram, where people like Mahatma Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad and Jawaharlal Nehru have held deliberations, is getting a chance to host the CWC meeting,” he said.

NDA leaders take dig

Reacting to the CWC meeting, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president and Union Minister Chirag Paswan termed it pressure tactics to bargain for more seats in the upcoming Assembly election.

“I see this meet as pressure politics, the way [RJD leader] Tejashwi Yadav is doing it by saying that he will contest elections on all 243 seats [in Bihar]. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi travelled throughout Bihar with Tejashwi Yadav during Voter Adhikar Yatra but remained silent on the question of projecting Tejashwi as CM candidate,” Mr. Paswan said while talking to reporters in Patna.

He further said, “Congress party would mount pressure to bargain for more seats because in the last election, Congress party was blamed for poor performance (out of 70 seats contested, Congress won 19). Congress assumes that RJD will give less seats this time, so through CWC, they will answer RJD.”

Janata Dal (United) State president Umesh Singh Kushwaha echoed the same over the CWC meeting calling it pressure politics to get more seats in the alliance.

“Congress party has no existence in Bihar and they have called the CWC meeting to mount pressure on RJD so that they can get more seats. What has happened in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh where Congress party tried an alliance with Samajwadi Party? The people of Bihar know very well that only [Chief Minister] Nitish Kumar can perform. The meeting would have no impact on us,” Mr. Kushwaha said.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Niraj Kumar said that convening a CWC meet in Patna for the first time since Independence is merely a show-off.

“The people of Bihar know well that for decades, the Congress party has only given nepotism and corruption. Whether it’s Rahul Gandhi’s visit or the efforts to form an alliance with Tejashwi Yadav, these are all election gimmicks, but the truth is that the NDA’s double-engine government has put Bihar on the path of development. The people of Bihar are choosing stability and progress under the leadership of Modi and Nitish, not the empty promises of the Congress,” the BJP spokesperson added.