At a time when the Congress is struggling to come to terms with the humiliating drubbing in the lok Sabha polls, AICC general secretary (Organisation) Janardan Dwivedi on Wednesday rued that much attention was not given to the organisation when it was in power.
To strengthen the cadre, Dwivedi, expressing his personal views, said organisational election is currently the biggest priority for the party but does not know what the priorities of others in the party are.“In a political organisation, one or the other activity keeps happening. But in my opinion, now the organisation is most important. In my view, as long as we had a Government in the Centre, much attention was not given to the organisation,” Dwivedi said talking to the reporters.
Dwivedi's remarks are significant as organisational weakness was stated as one of the key reasons for the party's debacle in the lok Sabha polls as well as previous Assembly polls in past in the States including Uttar Pradesh. last week, in a bid to boost the sagging morale of the party workers, Sonia and Rahul, last week reached out to them by writing “encouraging words” and continue to win hearts of the aam admi.
Dwivedi, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, added that one of the reasons for it could be that there are some or the other Assembly elections every year and attention of all political parties remain focused there.
“Due to this not only the organisation is ignored but the truth is also that right policies, programmes and plans also left unattended. We remain trapped in between a journey from election to election and peoples' work is not attended to even half of the time. This is the plight of all the parties and the Congress also could not have remained unaffected by it,” he said.Noting that there was need to pay attention to the organisation, he said that since organisational elections are to be completed in 2015, the membership drive needs to be speeded up and he will be communicating to the states in this regard in a day or two.
Dwivedi recalled that the Burari conference of AICC that had taken place in 2010, the party had decided a tenure of five years for all its committees. “Hence nationwide organisational elections of the party should be completed by 2015. For that the membership drive should be completed by the end of this year.At the 83rd All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session held at Burari on December 18, 19 and 20 in 2010, the party had ratified changes in the Congress Constitution, which had increased the term of all committees to five years from the existing three years.
Sonia is currently in the fourth term of the presidentship in which she was elected unopposed in 2010.