The Congress party in Madhya Pradesh is preparing to form its organisational network at the grassroots to strengthen its organisation. As part of this exercise, the party has begun constituting village-level committees aimed at cementing its cadre at the grassroots and strengthening the spread of its political message at the village level, which has been strongholds of the BJP.
Congress spokesperson from Madhya Pradesh, Mithin Singh Ahirwar, said the party was working continuously to strengthen its cadre and had begun forming village-level committees. "The organisation would emerge stronger than ever and be in a position to give the BJP a tough fight in the 2028 assembly elections, including at the village level."
The organisational build-up at the very bottom is part of the Congress’s Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan, under which all state units have been tasked with strengthening grassroots cadres. The exercise aims to support the party’s political outreach programmes and expand its organisational and ideological network across states. The party’s network has been in shambles nationally after back-to-back losses in the assembly elections after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
A senior Congress leader said the party has been struggling with the organisation as the leaders being given leadership roles have more or less underperformed and failed to prioritise the organisational upliftment through identifying and appointing the meritorious people. However, leaders in Madhya Pradesh think that its state unit president Jitu Patwari has been working hard to block the leakages in its administrative unit and also create an active political front against the BJP.
Notably, Madhya Pradesh is one of the very few states in the country where the elections are held between the two national parties, Congress and BJP, with other smaller parties having no considerable significance. This gives the Congress entire opposition space as compared to other states, where many a time secular votes get divided between other smaller parties.
With the formation of village-level committees, the Congress will be taking its organisational work down to the grassroots, with each village unit headed by a president and supported by a small team. Party leaders say the exercise will be completed ahead of the local body elections scheduled for early 2027, with the aim of improving the party’s performance in those polls and building momentum for the 2028 assembly elections.
This exercise has been started recently with he onset of new year, with PCC chief Jitu Patwari and senior leader Digvijaya Singh personally visiting several areas to scout and oversee the process. So far, around a dozen village-level Congress committees have been formed, according to party insiders, with the plan to eventually cover nearly 23,000 villages across the state. "We have just started forming them, so comparing them with numbers like only 12 have been formed may not be right," a Congress leader said.
“Madhya Pradesh has seen considerable factionalism among top leaders in the past, but most senior leaders are now without organisational responsibility, like Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, while new leaders are being given a chance,” a political analyst said. “Due to the intensity of factionalism, top leadership has gone down manifold in the state unit, raising expectations from the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. Jitu Patwari has also gained the confidence of the majority of people in the party due to his persistence, and if this translates on the ground, he could emerge as a rising star in the Congress.”