Preparations underway at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial for the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting as part of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session, in Ahmedabad, Monday, April 7, 2025.
From celebrating the centenary year of Mahatma Gandhi’s presidency of the party to commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the two-day Ahmedabad session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) will seek to underline the party’s legacy in Gujarat.
Ahead of the two-day meet on April 8 and 9 here, Congress leader Pawan Khera said every section of society, be it the middle class, Dalits, tribals or minorities are “feeling cheated under BJP rule and the entire country is looking towards the Congress with hope”.
“While people are looking at the Congress, we are looking at Gujarat because this State, the land of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, had always shown us the way in difficult times. That is why our leadership has chosen Gujarat to hold the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and AICC session. We are sure Gujarat will show us the way forward,” Mr. Khera, who heads the party’s media and publicity wing, said.
Mr. Khera underlined that despite slogans like “Congress-mukt Bharat” and attempts to eliminate it from the political map, the party continues to be “the voice of the citizens, not just a political party”.
Gujarat Congress chief Shaktisinh Gohil said the AICC session is being held in Gujarat after 64 years. “The last one was held at Bhavnagar in 1961,” he added.
Organisational restructuring with a focus on empowering district-level leadership will be among the key focus areas in the meet. The party would empower District Congress Committees (DCCs) in terms of decision-making including having a say in selection of candidates for elections, outline responsibilities for booth-level management and create an additional functional unit [mandal committees] between a district-level and block-level units.
Every DCC would have a political affairs committee (PAC) that could formulate the party’s response on important national political developments as well as those pertaining to their State, said a party insider.
The structural changes would include the DCCs leading the ideological fight against the BJP as well as counter any “polarising narrative” at the ground level besides raising funds for the party and run media and social media campaigns.
Soon after the session, Gujarat — a State where the party has been out of power since 1995 — will be the starting point for the Congress to usher in the changes, aimed at empowering the organisation at the grassroots level.
On Tuesday (April 8), an extended CWC will meet at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial to approve the draft resolutions for the session and, a day later, (April 9), the AICC session will take place, with around 1,725 elected AICC members and co-opted members participating in it.
The session will be held on the banks of the Sabarmati river between Sabarmati Ashram and Kochrab Ashram. The session is themed “Nyaypath: Sankalp, Samarpan and Sangharsh”.
Multiple important resolutions are expected to be passed at the AICC session on Wednesday. A separate resolution could be brought in there on Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, indicated a party source.
Published – April 07, 2025 10:47 pm IST