With the party still smarting from the Gujarat debacle, Congress’ high-profile Group to Look Into the Future Challenges has set its eyes on firming up a strategy to rejuvenate the AICC organisation, and the role model it is looking at is Britain’s Labour Party.
The group, chaired by senior party leader Veerappa Moily and comprising other prominent leaders including Rahul Gandhi, is in the process of finalising its first report that will focus on how to rebuild the party organisation.
“We have to revive, rejuvenate and transform the party, democratising and broadbasing it further,” Mr Moily said here. The report on how to do it would be submitted soon, after one or two more meetings to fine tune the details, he said.
 The group has held three meetings so far, in between running into a controversy when its convenor and Union Minister Jairam Ramesh was unceremoniously dropped from the body. The report, Mr Moily said, would be submitted to Congress president Sonia Gandhi for approval.
“We have to rejuvenate the party the way the Labour Party in Britain did. It was a dying party, but then it became the New Labour and became unbeatable… many Tony Blairs will be thrown up through this exercise,” he said. Capacity building will be a focus area as part of the strategy suggested by the group, he said, adding that “capacity building also means building leaders”.
The Group was formed by Ms Gandhi during the last AICC reshuffle in September to set the agenda and also monitor implementation of various party and government policies. Other members are Vayalar Ravi, Anand Sharma, Prithviraj Chavan, Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khursheed, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sandeep Dikshit, Sachin Pilot, Digvijay Singh and G Parameshwar.