NEW DELHI : To ensure coordination between the Congress and its state governments, party president Sonia Gandhi on Monday set up state committees for better synchronisation as well as manifesto implementation. The move is significant as senior party leaders feel a greater synergy is needed to ensure a unanimous stand on political as well as policy issues.
While coordination committees have been formed for four states – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry and Rajasthan – manifesto implementation committees have been formed for all these along with that for Punjab. While in-charges of respective states are heading the coordination committees, senior party leaders, including former union ministers Jairam Ramesh and P Chidambaram are heading manifesto committees for Chhattisgarh and Punjab, respectively.
“A greater coordination was needed between the party and the state governments. This is also to ensure that a common stand is made on key political and policy issues which are of key national importance. There will be more clarity on its scope of the committees when its meetings start,” a senior party leader from Rajasthan in the coordination committee said requesting anonymity.
The committees have been formed in the backdrop of Congress’ increased offensive over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in which its state governments and chief ministers are playing a key role in building the party’s narrative. All party-ruled states are expected to soon pass a resolution opposing the CAA and according to a senior party leaders, the committees would step in on issues as crucial as CAA.
“Think of these as a high level committees or core groups which will step in to make key decisions related to stand on issues of significance. There has always been felt a need of such coordination mechanism to express aspirations of party workers to state governments who can fulfil them. We are hopeful these committees will be able to plug some of these gaps,” a senior coordination committee member from Madhya Pradesh said requesting anonymity.
The leader quoted above said, for instance, the details of when Madhya Pradesh would bring in a resolution against CAA could be taken up whenever the meeting of the coordination committee takes place.