Sonia's penchant for panels leaves CPP twiddling its thumbs

Sonia's penchant for panels leaves CPP twiddling its thumbs
SANJIV SINHA

NEW DELHI, NOV 22: In its zeal to appear a credible Opposition and sharp-focus its political and socio-economic strategy, the Congress appears to have got bogged down in a spate of committees/departments, many among them with similar objectives.

The expansion of the party's Parliamentary Affairs Committee (PAC) yesterday from a 30-member to a 60-member body, including former chief ministers and PCC chiefs with the objective of broad-basing inputs from senior partymen is yet another indication of party chief Sonia Gandhi's penchant for committees.

Now the regular PAC will meet daily before the start of the session to hammer out the party's strategy for the day while its expanded version will meet a few times over the entire session to ``chalk out long term issues'' to be raised in Parliament.

These two nominated bodies have virtually cast out the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) executive, the only elected body of the party in Parliament. Elections to the CPP executive, which comprises members from both Houses, were held during to the last session -- the CPP has one secretary each for the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha -- but strangely it has not met even once after its was formed.

With so many avenues for policy-making around, its probably more of a relief that Sonia has not set up the Congress Parliamentary Board (CPB), as demanded by rebel party leader Jitendra Prasada.

The number of committees looking into the party's strategy, especially in the sphere of economic policies, is perhaps the best indication of how itloves setting up bodies, mostly working with similar objectives.

In August this year, Sonia set up a gigantic 50-member introspection committee headed by senior leader Pranab Mukherjee, to review and redefine the party's economic policies in the context of the ongoing reforms. The committee, which is still to submit its report, was later divided into five sub-groups to look into a specific aspect on the economic sphere, including disinvestment and agriculture.

Apart from this, a Research Cell comprising sitting and former MPs well-versed with economic and foreign policy matters, was also put in place and attached the CPP to chart out the party's approach on these issues in Parliament. And this has now become redundant with the creation of another newly-created department, that of Policy Planning and Coordination, headed by former Uttar Pradesh PCC chief Salman Khursheed.

This department too will look at the party's approach on a gamut of issues which include economic matters such as disinvestment and WTO as well as those of foreign policy, national security and minorities.

All these committees have been set up over and above long existing departments in the AICC set up to specifically enunciate the party's views on a variety of crucial issues. There is the economic cell, headed by former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and Jairam Ramesh as its secretary, a Minorities department, with Arjun Singh as its chief, and a foreign affairs cell, chaired by former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh.

All these AICC departments are meant to advise the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's highest policy-making body, on matters they deal with.

In fact, with the party already finalising its stand on disinvestment, privatisation of banks and many areas of the WTO, a large area of work by the economic introspection committee appears to have been overtaken by events.