Congress to amend constitution to reserve seats in CWC

Raipur, Feb 24 (IANS) The Congress on Friday announced that it will amend its Constitution to give proper representation to SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, women, and those below 50 years in the Congress Working Committee - the party's top decision-making body.

In one of the proposals as made at the Udaipur 'Chintan Shivir' in May last year, the party will make these provisions by amending 26 articles and 32 rules.

If the proposed amendments are passed in the plenary, then former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi will become lifelong CWC members, along with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

General Secretary, in charge of communication, Jairam Ramesh said that the most important proposal is to provide 50 per cent reservations in the Working Committee for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs, Minorities, women and youth.

There is also a proposal to increase the strength of the CWC, which is 25 right now including party's floor leaders in Parliament and the party president.

The Congress Steering Committee, on Friday morning, decided unanimously to empower the party President to nominate members to the CWC.

"We had a 2-1/2 hour discussion on this issue and the dominant view, overwhelming view was keeping in mind the political challenges facing the country, facing the Congress Party in its capacity as the main opposition and keeping in mind the far-reaching amendments that we are going to bring about tomorrow and day after in our party's constitution, 16 Articles are being amended, 32 rules are being amended.

"Keeping in mind, both these factors, the unanimous view of the Steering Committee was that this is the time to empower the Congress President to nominate members to the Congress Working Committee," Ramesh added.

However, sources said that Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Digvijaya Singh and Ajay Maken advocated elections to the CWC elections but eventually aligned with the majority view. The members of G-23 and their sympathisers of the grouping did not speak in favour of the elections, sources said.