Old wine, new bottle: Congress seniors to handle strategy for 2024 polls

NEW DELHI,MAY 25: The Congress on Tuesday announced a new political affairs group and a Task Force to get the party battle-ready for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but the list neither had new faces nor younger leaders barring one name — political strategist Sunil Kanugolu.

To placate the anger of senior leaders pushing for complete organisational overhaul, the group does include G-23 leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma. General secretary in-charge Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is now officially assigned with national responsibility as a member of Task Force 2024. Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is part of the political affairs group under Sonia Gandhi. 

In its first meeting on Tuesday, the task force agreed to meet at regular intervals to discuss strategy on key issues. Each member of shall be assigned specific tasks related to organisation, communications and media outreach, finance and election management.  

Interestingly, both the key groups have old hands like Mallikarjun Kharge, Ambika Soni, Jairam Ramesh, Ajay Maken, Mukul Wasnik, P Chidambaram, Digvijay Singh and KC Venugopal. These leaders are already part of several existing committees for planning and strategy.

But it turned out to be a disappointment for some leaders, who had expected that the party would go with the Chintan Shivir agreement to have half of its leaders in organisations under the age of 50. Kanugolu (below 40 years) is the lone young leader in the two groups.

However, a third group for planning ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ have some young leaders like Sachin pilot, Jothi Mani and Ravneet Singh Bittu among others. The task force has been mandated to look at the various elections in the run up to the 2024 Parliamentary elections and various grassroot programs as also how to reach to the last person in the line, as also to common people, both in cities as also in the villages.

-TNIE