Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday constituted a consultative group, headed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to deliberate on current matters, including those related to the coronavirus outbreak, and formulate the party’s views on various issues.
The 11-member group also comprises former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala, general secretary in-charge organisation KC Venugopal and former union ministers P Chidambaram, Manish Tewari and Jairam Ramesh.
In a press release, the party said the group will meet virtually every day to discuss the current issues and formulate the party’s stand on those.
The other members of the group are Praveen Chakravarty, Gaurav Vallabh, Supriya Shrinate and Rohan Gupta.
The Congress high command has been interacting with party leaders from across the country through video-conferencing. Even a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision making body, was held on April 2 through video-conferencing.
The opposition party has repeatedly demanded scaling up the testing and providing personal protection equipment (PPE) to doctors, nurses and health workers.
It has also urged the government to spell out steps it planned to take to mitigate the woes of migrant labourers stranded on the borders of different states and those of the farmers waiting to harvest crops.
The Congress has demanded state-specific special economic packages and urged the Centre to clear all pending dues, including the GST, to states to enable them to fight the pandemic.
It further said the government must ensure phased lifting of the lockdown and coordinate with states to mitigate the sufferings of the poor.
For her part, the Congress chief has written six letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on different issues related to the coronavirus pandemic since March 23.