Congress Working Committee

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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[edit]

Sources:[2][3][4]

President

Name Portrait Position in government
Mallikarjun Kharge


Members[5]

S. No Member Portrait Position in government
1. Sonia Gandhi
2. Manmohan Singh
3. Rahul Gandhi
4. A. K. Antony
5. Ambika Soni
6. Abhishek Singhvi
7. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury
8. Ajay Maken
9. Anand Sharma
10. Jairam Ramesh
11. Gaikhangam Gangmei
12. Jitendra Singh
13. Selja Kumari
14. Dr Lal Thanhawla
15. Mukul Wasnik
16. Charanjit Singh Channi
17. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra
  • General Secretary
18. P. Chidambaram
19. Randeep Surjewala
20. N. Raghuveera Reddy
21. Tariq Anwar
22. Sachin Pilot
23. Tamradhwaj Sahu
24. Shashi Tharoor
25. Salman Khurshid
26. Digvijaya Singh
27. Deepak Babaria
28. Meira Kumar
29. Jagdish Thakor
30. Ghulam Ahmad Mir
31. Avinash Pandey
32. Deepa Dasmunsi
33. Gaurav Gogoi
34. Syed Naseer Hussain
35. Kamleshwar Patel
36. K. C. Venugopal

Permanent Invitees[edit]

[6]

S.no Member Portrait Position
1. Pratibha Singh MP Lok Sabha, Mandi
2. Pawan Kumar Bansal Ex MP, (Chandigarh)
3. Veerappa Moily Ex MP, (Karnataka)
4. Harish Rawat Former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand
5. Mohan Prakash Ex MLA, Rajasthan
6. Ramesh Chennithala MLA, Kerala
7. B. K. Hariprasad MLC, Karnataka
8. Manish Tewari MP, Punjab
9. Tariq Hameed Karra Ex MP, Jammu & Kashmir
10. Deepender Singh Hooda MP, Haryana
11. Girish Chodankar
12. T. Subbarami Reddy Ex MP, Andhra Pradesh
13. K Raju
14. Chandrakant Handore Ex MLA, Maharashtra
15. Meenakshi Natarajan Ex MP, Madhya Pradesh
16. Phulo Devi Netam MP, Chhattisgarh
17. Damodar Raja Narasimha Cabinet Minister, Telangana
18. Sudip Roy Barman MLA, Tripura

Special Invitees[edit]

[7]

Member party Position
G. Sanjeeva Reddy President, INTUC
Neeraj Kundan President, NSUI
BV Srinivas President, IYC
Lalji Desai Chief Organiser ,Seva Dal
Gidugu Rudra Raju Ex President APCC
Chinta Mohan Ex-MP
Sachin Rao Training Incharge

Criticism[edit]

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[edit]

References[edit]

  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. ^ "Indian National Congress".
  3. ^ "Analysis: New Congress Working Committee - Focus on Polls, Not Rocking Boat".
  4. ^ Phukan, Sandeep (20 August 2023). "Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot included in revamped Congress Working Committee". The Hindu.
  5. ^ "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee".
  6. ^ "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 20 July 2019.
  7. ^ "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 17 July 2019.
  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. ^ "Election Commission Tells Congress to Hold Internal Elections by June 30". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  10. ^ Pankaj Vohra (8 August 2020). "EC can freeze Congress symbol or initiate action if the party remains leaderless". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  11. ^ "Congress "Defamed", Rahul Gandhi Should Return to Lead: Sanjay Nirupam After Maharashtra Twist". Archived from the original on 6 February 2020.
  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. ^ "Congress moving towards extinction?". Archived from the original on 14 March 2020.

External links[edit]