Plenary to showcase Cong feats

New Delhi: It will be a virtual tightrope walk for the Congress at the 82nd plenary session in Hyderabad's Gachibowli stadium from January 21 to 23.

Apart from members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's highest policy-making body, about 10,000 delegates were expected to participate in the plenary.

The Hyderabad plenary will showcase the major government initiatives in the 19 months since the Congress-led UPA came to in power at the Centre after the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

This may form part of the resolution on agriculture, poverty alleviation and employment to be adopted at the session.

These initiatives include the government's flagship projects Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (REGS) and the Bharat Nirman (BNP) Programme.

Enjoying the luxury of power at the Centre, the party would have to trudge the middle path on key issues like alliances, lest it sends wrong singals to its allies in the coalition.

Party leaders say that Congress could ill afford to lose sight of the fact that it was currently conducting its first coalition experiment at the Centre.

In such a scenario, brave talks of going alone and about single party rule would be suicidal and what was needed was chanting the mantra of coalition and alliances, they say.

The dramatic shift in the political scene since the plenary session at Bangalore in March 2001 which saw BJP-led NDA out of power at the Centre would automatically necessiate a shift in its stance.

The mantra of anti-BJP alliance pursued vigorously by Sonia Gandhi after the Shimla conclave of senior leaders in 2003 that called for coming together of secular forces had done the trick for the Congress.

Phrases like 'Congress has a lot to learn about running coalitions' is now being heard from many top leaders of the party. It was these same leaders who used to boast a decade back that Congress had never shared power at the Centre.

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Union Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee is heading the committee drafting resolutions for the meet. Another veteran leader Arjun Singh is leading the sub-committee that will prepare the political resolution.

In fact, the plank of stability and providing single party rule was the unique selling point of Congress till a decade back.

P V Narasimha Rao was the last Congress prime minister in the single party rule era as he provided stability for a full term from 1991 to 1996 despite initially the Congress being in a minority.

Congress had absolute majority at the Centre way back in 1984 when the elections were held after the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

A section of party leaders are now talking of the idea of 'healthy competition' in the states in the changed scenario where the Congress has powerful regional parties as allies in some states.

This section feels that the party was losing space in states where it was entering into a coalition as regional parties were gaining in strength in such an arrangement.

Another key issue that the party would have to face at Hyderabad plenary was how to revive the organisation in UP and Bihar as without that Congress's dream of having a single party rule at the Centre is most likely to reamin just that, a dream.

Some party leaders feel that Congress could have done much better in the recent Assembly polls in Bihar if it had allowed 'healthy competition' and not become a partner of the Lalu Prasad-led RJD whose track record in governance was dismal.

The session would also have to devise a strategy for the Assembly elections in five states including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala where the party prospects were not that bright.