Congress Working Committee

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is the executive committee of the Indian National Congress. It was formed in December 1920 at Nagpur session of INC which was headed by C. Vijayaraghavachariar. It is composed of senior party leaders and is responsible for taking decisions on important policy and organizational matters, as well as guiding and directing the party's activities and campaigns at the national level. It typically consists of fifteen members elected from the All India Congress Committee (AICC). The CWC is headed by the party president, who is elected by the members of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), the party's central governing body.

The Working Committee has had different levels of power in the party at different times. In the period prior to Indian independence in 1947, the Working Committee was the centre of power, and the Working President was frequently more active than the Congress President. In the period after 1967, when the Congress Party split for the first time (between factions loyal to Indira Gandhi and those led by the Syndicate of regional leaders including Kamaraj, Prafulla Chandra Sen, Ajoy Mukherjee, and Morarji Desai), the power of the Working Committee declined; but Indira Gandhi's triumph in 1971 led to a re-centralisation of power away from the states and the All-India Congress Committee and caused the Working Committee in Delhi to once again be the paramount decision-making body of the party.^[1] The centralised nature of Congress decision making has since caused observers in the states to informally describe instructions from Delhi as coming from the High Command.

Composition of Congress Working Committee

Sources:^[2]^[3]^[4]

President

Name	Portrait	Position in government
Mallikarjun Kharge		Member of Parliament Leader of the Opposition, Rajya Sabha

Members^[5]

S. No	Member	Position in government
1.	Sonia Gandhi	Member of Parliament Former Congress President
2.	Manmohan Singh	Former Member of Parliament Former Prime Minister of India
3.	Rahul Gandhi	Member of Parliament Leader of the Opposition, Lok Sabha Former INC President
4.	A. K. Antony	Former Member of Parliament
5.	Ambika Soni	Former Member of Parliament
6.	Abhishek Singhvi	Member of Parliament
7.	Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury	Former Member of Parliament
8.	Ajay Maken	Member of Parliament
9.	Anand Sharma	Former Member of Parliament
10.	Jairam Ramesh	Member of Parliament
11.	Gaikhangam Gangmei	Former Deputy Chief Minister, Manipur
12.	Jitendra Singh	Former Member of Parliament
13.	Selja Kumari	Member of Parliament
14.	Dr Lal Thanhawla	Former Chief Minister of Mizoram
15.	Mukul Wasnik	Member of Parliament Former Union Minister of India
16.	Charanjit Singh Channi	Member of Parliament Former Chief Minister of Punjab
17.	Priyanka Gandhi Vadra	Member of Parliament Congress Party General Secretary
18.	P. Chidambaram	Member of Parliament Former Union Minister of India
19.	Randeep Surjewala	Member of Parliament
20.	N. Raghuveera Reddy	Former AP Congress President
21.	Tariq Anwar	Member of Parliament
22.	Sachin Pilot	Former Member of Parliament Former Deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan
23.	Tamradhwaj Sahu	Former Member of the Legislative Assembly
24.	Shashi Tharoor	Member of Parliament
25.	Salman Khurshid	Former Union Minister Former Member of Parliament
26.	Digvijaya Singh	Member of Parliament Former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh
27.	Deepak Babaria	Member of the Legislative Assembly
28.	Meira Kumar	Former Speaker of Lok Sabha
29.	Jagdish Thakor	Former Gujarat Congress President
30.	Ghulam Ahmad Mir	Former J & K Congress President
31.	Avinash Pandey	Former Member of Parliament
32.	Deepa Dasmunsi	Former Member of Parliament
33.	Gaurav Gogoi	Member of Parliament Deputy Leader of Indian National Congress in Lok Sabha
34.	Syed Naseer Hussain	Member of Parliament
35.	Kamleshwar Patel	Member of the Legislative Assembly
36.	K. C. Venugopal	Member of Parliament
37	Balasaheb Thorat	Former Minister, Government of Maharashtra

Permanent Invitees

^[6]

S.no	Member	Position
1.	Ajoy Kumar	Ex MP Lok Sabha
2.	Rajeev Shukla	MP
3.	A. Chellakumar	Ex MP Lok Sabha
4.	Pratibha Singh	Ex MP Lok Sabha
5.	Pawan Kumar Bansal	ex MP, (Chandigarh)
6.	Veerappa Moily	ex MP, (Karnataka)
7.	Harish Rawat	Former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand
8.	Bharatsinh Solanki	Ex MP
9.	Mohan Prakash	ex MLA, Rajasthan
10.	Ramesh Chennithala	MLA, Kerala
11.	B. K. Hariprasad	MLC, Karnataka
12.	Manish Tewari	MP, chandigarh
13.	Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa	MP
14.	Deepender Singh Hooda	MP, Haryana
15.	Devender Yadav	Ex MLA
16.	Girish Chodankar
17.	Gurdeep Singh Sappal
18.	T. Subbarami Reddy	ex MP, Andhra Pradesh
19.	K Raju
20.	Manikrao Thakre	Ex MLA
21.	Chandrakant Handore	MP Rajya Sabha, ex MLAMaharashtra
22.	Meenakshi Natarajan	ex MP, Madhya Pradesh
23.	Manickam Tagore	MP
24.	Phulo Devi Netam	MP, Chhattisgarh
25.	Damodar Raja Narasimha	Cabinet Minister, Telangana
26.	Sudip Roy Barman	MLA, Tripura
27.	Kanhaiya Kumar
28.	Sachin Rao

Special Invitees

^[7]

S. No	Member	Position
1.	Alka Lamba	President, All India Mahila Congress
2.	Varun Choudhary	President, NSUI
3.	Srinivas BV	President, IYC
4.	Lalji Desai	Chief Organiser ,Seva Dal
5.	Supriya Shrinate	Chairman, Social Media & Platforms
6.	Challa Vamshi Chand Reddy	Ex MLA
7.	Kodikunnil Suresh	MP
8.	Yashomati Thakur	MLA
9.	Gidugu Rudra Raju	ex President APCC
10.	Ganesh Godiyal	Ex MLA
11.	Praniti Shinde	MP
12.	M. M. Pallam Raju	ex-MP
13.	Pawan Khera	Chairman, Media & Publicity
14.	Vikar Rasool Wani	Ex President J&KPCC
15.	Naseem Khan	Ex MLA Maharashtra

Criticism

The Congress has not held internal elections for CWC for nearly 20 years and the last elections were held in 1998.^[8] In 2017 Election Commission ordered it to hold internal elections^[9] but as of 2020 no elections were held.^[10] When Congress was trying to forge an alliance with ideologically opposite Shiv Sena in Maharashtra in 2019, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam publicly urged Sonia Gandhi to dissolve the CWC, saying "they cannot be trusted anymore."^[11] ^[12] In 2020 a paper by Observer Research Foundation calls a large number of CWC members "unprincipled, opportunists and self-serving individuals for whom self-interest is paramount."^[13]

References

^ "Towards a More Competitive Party System in India", Ram Joshi and Kirtidev Desai, Asian Survey, Vol. 18, No. 11. (Nov., 1978), pp. 1091-1116.
^ "Indian National Congress".
^ "Analysis: New Congress Working Committee - Focus on Polls, Not Rocking Boat".
^ Phukan, Sandeep (20 August 2023). "Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot included in revamped Congress Working Committee". The Hindu.
^ "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee".
^ "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 20 July 2019.
^ "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 17 July 2019.
^ "Nobody But Rahul, Says Congress Leader Whose Father Ran vs Sonia Gandhi". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
^ "Election Commission Tells Congress to Hold Internal Elections by June 30". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
^ Pankaj Vohra (8 August 2020). "EC can freeze Congress symbol or initiate action if the party remains leaderless". Retrieved 23 August 2020.
^ "Congress "Defamed", Rahul Gandhi Should Return to Lead: Sanjay Nirupam After Maharashtra Twist". Archived from the original on 6 February 2020.
^ "Old Grudge, Unfulfilled Demand: Why Rahul Gandhi Remained Absent from Cong's Meet on Delhi Riots". 26 February 2020. Archived from the original on 26 February 2020.
^ "Congress moving towards extinction?". Archived from the original on 14 March 2020.

External links

[1] "Towards a More Competitive Party System in India", Ram Joshi and Kirtidev Desai, Asian Survey, Vol. 18, No. 11. (Nov., 1978), pp. 1091-1116.

[2] "Indian National Congress".

[3] "Analysis: New Congress Working Committee - Focus on Polls, Not Rocking Boat".

[4] Phukan, Sandeep (20 August 2023). "Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot included in revamped Congress Working Committee". The Hindu.

[5] "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee".

[6] "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 20 July 2019.

[7] "Indian National Congress - Congress Working Committee". Archived from the original on 17 July 2019.

[8] "Nobody But Rahul, Says Congress Leader Whose Father Ran vs Sonia Gandhi". Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2020.

[9] "Election Commission Tells Congress to Hold Internal Elections by June 30". Retrieved 23 August 2020.

[10] Pankaj Vohra (8 August 2020). "EC can freeze Congress symbol or initiate action if the party remains leaderless". Retrieved 23 August 2020.

[11] "Congress "Defamed", Rahul Gandhi Should Return to Lead: Sanjay Nirupam After Maharashtra Twist". Archived from the original on 6 February 2020.

[12] "Old Grudge, Unfulfilled Demand: Why Rahul Gandhi Remained Absent from Cong's Meet on Delhi Riots". 26 February 2020. Archived from the original on 26 February 2020.

[13] "Congress moving towards extinction?". Archived from the original on 14 March 2020.

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