Congress Working Committee

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 typically consists of fifteen members elected from the All India Congress Committee. It is headed by the Working President.

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 bosses 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[edit]

President

Name	Portrait	Position in government
Sonia Gandhi		MP & Ex Leader of Opposition Loksabha

Members^[2]

Member	Portrait	Position in government
Rahul Gandhi		Member of Parliament
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra		General Secretary
Manmohan Singh		Member of Parliament Former Prime Minister of India
A. K. Antony		Member of Parliament
P. Chidambaram		Member of Parliament
Mallikarjun Kharge		Leader of the Opposition, Rajya Sabha
Ghulam Nabi Azad		Former MP Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Former Leader of the Opposition, Rajya Sabha
Ambika Soni		Member of Parliament
Anand Sharma		Member of Parliament
Harish Rawat		Former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Former Union Minister of India Former Member of Parliament
K.C Venugopal		Member of Parliament
Mukul Wasnik		Ex Union Minister
Oommen Chandy		Former Chief Minister of Kerala
Ajay Maken		Former Member of Parliament
Meira Kumar		Former Speaker of Lok Sabha
Jitendra Singh		Former Union Minister
Tariq Anwar		Former Member of Parliament
Gaikhangam Gangmei		Former Deputy Chief Minister, Manipur
Raghuveer Meena		Former Member of Parliament
Dr Lal Thanhawla		Former Chief Minister of Mizoram

Permanent Invitees[edit]

^[3]

Member	party Position
Digvijaya Singh	MP
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury	MP
Jairam Ramesh	MP
Salman Khurshid	Ex MP
Avinash Pandey	Ex MP
K. H. Muniyappa	Ex MP
Pramod Tiwari	MP
Tariq Hameed Karra	Ex MP
Pawan Kumar Bansal	Ex MP
Rajni Patil	Ex MP
P. L. Punia	MP
R. P. N. Singh	Ex Union Minister
Shaktisinh Gohil	MP
Rajeev Shukla	Ex MP
Dinesh Gundu Rao	MLA
Manicka Tagore	MP
A. Chellakumar	MP
Ajoy Kumar	Ex MP
H. K. Patil	MLA
Devender Yadav	Ex MLA
Vivek Bansal
Manish Chatrath
Bhakta Charan Das	Ex Union Minister
Kuljit Singh Nagra

Special Invitees[edit]

^[4]

Member	party Position
G. Sanjeeva Reddy	President, INTUC
Neeraj Kundan	President, NSUI
Srinivas BV	President, IYC
Lalji Desai	Chief Organiser ,Seva Dal
Depender Hooda	MP
Kuldeep Bishnoi	MLA
Chinta Mohan	Ex-MP
Sachin Rao	Training Incharge

Criticism[edit]

The Congress has not held internal elections to CWC for nearly 20 years and last elections were held in 1998.^[5] In 2017 Election Commission ordered it to hold internal elections^[6] but as of 2020 no elections were held.^[7] 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."^[8] ^[9] 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."^[10]

References[edit]

↑ "Towards a More Competitive Party System in India", Ram Joshi and Kirtidev Desai, Asian Survey, Vol. 18, No. 11. (Nov., 1978), pp. 1091-1116.
↑ https://www.inc.in/congress-working-committee/members
↑ https://www.inc.in/en/congress-working-committee/permanent-invitees
↑ https://www.inc.in/en/congress-working-committee/special-invitees
↑ "Nobody But Rahul, Says Congress Leader Whose Father Ran vs Sonia Gandhi". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
↑ "Election Commission Tells Congress to Hold Internal Elections by June 30". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
↑ Pankaj Vohra (8 August 2020). "EC can freeze Congress symbol or initiate action if party remains leaderless". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
↑ "Congress "Defamed", Rahul Gandhi Should Return to Lead: Sanjay Nirupam After Maharashtra Twist". Archived from the original on 6 February 2020.
↑ "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.
↑ "Congress moving towards extinction?". Archived from the original on 14 March 2020.

External links[edit]

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[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] ttps://www.inc.in/congress-working-committee/members

[3] ttps://www.inc.in/en/congress-working-committee/permanent-invitees

[4] ttps://www.inc.in/en/congress-working-committee/special-invitees

[5] "Nobody But Rahul, Says Congress Leader Whose Father Ran vs Sonia Gandhi". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2020.

[6] "Election Commission Tells Congress to Hold Internal Elections by June 30". Retrieved 23 August 2020.

[7] Pankaj Vohra (8 August 2020). "EC can freeze Congress symbol or initiate action if party remains leaderless". Retrieved 23 August 2020.

[8] "Congress "Defamed", Rahul Gandhi Should Return to Lead: Sanjay Nirupam After Maharashtra Twist". Archived from the original on 6 February 2020.

[9] "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.

[10] "Congress moving towards extinction?". Archived from the original on 14 March 2020.

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