The Indian National Congress, at a three-day plenary session last weekend, set the tone for its 2024 election campaign with a call to all secular parties to come together to take on the Narendra Modi administration.

The session was held at Raipur, capital of Chhattisgarh, one of only three states which are under Congress rule now.

Modi had led the National Democratic Alliance, headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, to power in 2014, defeating the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance which ruled for 10 years. He and his party are looking forward to a third successive win in 2024.

Before the 2019 elections, late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, Sonia, who had been heading the Congress and the UPA, handed over the party post to her son, Rahul. He resigned after the elections, owning moral responsibility for the party’s poor poll performance. Thereafter the party remained virtually headless.

The plenary session came after two steps to breathe new life into the organisation. One was a march on foot from Kanyakumari in the south to Kashmir in the north, undertaken by Rahul Gandhi with the stated purpose of reuniting India which had been divided by BJP’s hate politics. The other was the election of Mallikarjuna Kharge as party President. Rahul Gandhi was hoping to become the first elected President in a long time. However, he did not offer himself as a candidate since some party leaders openly demanded a president from outside the Gandhi family.

The presidential election, which was the high point of the organisational elections, was a welcome step towards democratisation of the party.

The Congress Working Committee, which is the most powerful limb of the organisation, is yet to be constituted. In the colonial period, when the party was spearheading the freedom movement, all CVC members were nominated by the elected President. Later some seats in it were filled by election. Still later the party went back to the practice of filling all seats by nomination.

The plenary session adopted a resolution raising the strength of the Working Committee from 23 to 35.

According to reports, after am intense debate outside the plenary session, it was decided to fill all the places in the CWC through nomination. This is a regressive step. No one had the authority to take a decision of this kind outside the plenary while it was in session.

This clearly shows that elements unhappy with the process of democratisation of the party have already started attempts to scuttle it.

Nomination of CWC members by Kharge will, in all probability, mean nomination by the Gandhi family, which was forced to stay out of the presidential election.

The plenary amended the party constitution to reserve 50 per cent of the seats in the CWC to Dalits, Adivasis, other backward classes, minorities and women.

Those unfamiliar with facts may see this as a step which will give the weaker sections of society more power in the organisation. What it will actually do is to ensure that members of the forward castes, who constitute less than 15 per cent of the population, get at least half the CWC seats at all times. This section can be expected to corner a good number of the seats reserved for women also.

Instead of pursuing such meaningless reforms, the top leadership must dispassionately study the factors hampering the advance of promising young party leaders belonging to the weaker sections and address then sincerely.

In a political resolution, adopted at the plenary, the party declared it would go all out to identify, mobilise and align like-minded secular forces to form a front against the BJP.

It stressed the urgent need for a united opposition to take on the NDA on “common ideological grounds.”

In a reference to efforts by some parties to forge an alliance excluding the Congress, it observed the emergence of a third force would only help the BJP and NDA.

It said the party would prepare a Vision Document for 2024, which would encompass issues of unemployment, eradication of poverty, inflation, women empowerment, national security etc.

The opposition parties have to do more to inspire confidence in the people. If the Congress is serious about opposition unity, instead of working on a vision document of its own, its leaders should sit with leaders of like-minded parties and draw up an action programme to be taken up if they manage to beat BJP and NDA in the elections.

The programme should have two essential elements. One, it must end jobless growth, which has been the hallmark of development under Modi and create employment opportunities. Two, it must undo the misguided steps the Modi regime took in pursuit of its Himdutva ideology.

The people need an assurance that the opposition is capable of putting together a government which can fulfil their expectations.