First meeting of new CWC in September first week outside Delhi

New Delhi: The newly constituted Congress Working Committee (CWC) will meet in the first week of September outside Delhi.

This will be the first meeting of the 84-member jumbo panel after being reconstituted on August 20 (Sunday).

The party's all-important body has 39 members, 32 permanent invitees and 13 special invitees.

The venue of the meeting is being finalised, sources said. There are four Congress-ruled states - Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka -- in the country while the grand old party is a ruling coalition partner in Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and Bihar.

This would be the second time in the past five years that the CWC was meeting outside Delhi.

On March 12, 2019, the CWC met in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The Ahmedabad meeting was its first in Gujarat in 58 years and coincided with the 89th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi salt march.

That said, the move to increase the size of the CWC has drawn flak from various sections of the party with some claiming that it has devalued the so-called highest decision-making body of the party.

The loyalists of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi and general secretary in-charge of the organisation K C Venugopal have been accommodated in the please-all CWC.

After the CWC reconstitution, Kharge is expected to carry out an organisational reshuffle. The number of general secretaries is likely to go from the present 9 to 12. That means three more general secretaries will be appointed from the 39 members of the CWC.

Many in-charges of states are likely to be replaced. The new inductees are likely to be from 32 permanent invitees of the CWC. The heads of frontal organisations are also expected to be changed.