Taking ahead her decision to give more prominence to women in her party, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday got the Congress Working Committee (CWC) approve a Constitutional amendment mandating that from now onwards there will be two delegates to All India Congress Committee(AICC) from every block instead of one, the additional representative compulsorily being a woman.
The CWC, which met to discuss various issues related to the one-day AICC session scheduled to be held on November 17 in Delhi, approved the proposal that is part of several other amendments to the Constitution to be formally approved during the session.
The CWC also approved that instead of two categories of membership — “active” and “primary” — AICC will revert to its pre-1950 system of having just one category called “member”.
Size of committee
AICC media committee chairman Veerappa Moily briefing reporters after the meeting, said the CWC also approved a proposal to reduce the size of the subjects committee so that Pradesh Congress Committee and AICC delegates got more time to raise their points at the AICC sessions, instead of the subject committee hogging most of the time.
Party sources said Rahul Gandhi, who attended his first CWC meeting in his capacity as a general secretary and a CWC member, proposed that a compulsory subscription of party publications by members should be made optional.
However, Mr Moily refused to give the details of the proposals made by various members, saying they would be discussed at an appropriate time later.
The All India Congress Committee session would have four resolutions, three of them on the Centenary of Satyagraha, the 150 years of Freedom Struggle and 60 years of Independence, while the fourth one would be an omnibus one comprising political, economic, foreign affairs and other issues, Mr Moily said.
No word on K’taka
The CWC meeting did not discuss any other issue, including the political situation in Karnataka as the meet was purely devoted to issues related to the session, the senior Congress leader added.
