Congress President Sonia Gandhi will chair a meeting of the party’s parliamentary strategy group on Tuesday ahead of the Monsoon Session of the Parliament. The consultation has added significance because it will involve the writers of the “letter of dissent” and those who vociferously defended the Gandhis against what was perceived as a challenge to their leadership coming face to face.
The meeting has been called to fine-tune the party’s strategy with regard to the issues that will be taken up by it in the Monsoon Session and also firm up its stance on the several ordinances that will come up for ratification by Parliament during the session.
It is also being held in the run-up to an opposition parties’ meet that is expected to happen later this week to try and build a coordinated approach for the upcoming Parliament session.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and ex-party chief Rahul Gandhi are also expected to attend the meeting, which will be interesting to watch in terms of the way the intra-party dynamics is evolving in the wake of the letter 23 senior leaders wrote to the Congress president, seeking sweeping reforms in the party.
The changes brought about by Sonia in the party’s parliamentary team and the composition of the strategy group are seen as a signal to the dissenters. The Lok Sabha strategy group comprises Leader of the House Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, his newly appointed deputy Gaurav Gogoi, chief whip K. Suresh and whips Manickam Tagore and Ravneet Singh Bittu. The Rajya Sabha group consists of Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, Deputy Leader Anand Sharma, AICC Treasurer and Sonia confidant Ahmed Patel, AICC General Secretary in charge of Organisation K.C. Venugopal and chief whip Jairam Ramesh.
Azad and Sharma were amongst the 23 leaders who had signed on the letter sent to Sonia, and at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee held in its wake, they were at the receiving end of the ire of the majority of the participants.
The meeting is also significant in the backdrop of the letter as the parliamentary appointments that were made a few days after the CWC meet involved leaders such as Gogoi, Bittu and Ramesh, who are seen as close to Rahul Gandhi, and there was an apparent effort to pack the strategy groups of the two Houses with leaders who were opposed to the letter-writing effort. These changes were seen as a stern message to the dissenters.
