AICC Session goes for a drastic change

Congress Plenary was inaugurated in a new avatar on Saturday which started with the Twitter handle of Rahul Gandhi changing to Rahul Gandhi from office of Rahul Gandhi; lending a missing touch to his twitter handle.

The Session also showcased much reconciled Congress President who at the beginning of the Session acknowledged the role which seniors will have to play in rebuilding the party. Though he has been stressing the importance of coordination between junior and senior leaders after 2014 Lok Sabha election, its importance was not lost on anyone when he said that seniors are very much required by the Congress Party.

Perhaps for this reason, Former Speaker of Lok Sabha, senior Dalit leader and daughter of late Dalit icon Babu Jagjivan Ram was first to speak after Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi’s attack on BJP remained brief perhaps reserving the ammunition for the last day. Though he did build the binary between politics of divisiveness and politics of love, differentiating BJP from the Congress, he did not get into the detail. But what caught the eye was that unlike previous AICC Session, Congress leadership was not accommodated on the dais. Congress decided to keep the dais empty to give the message that this plenary is less about leaders and more about workers. The idea looked fresh and did away with the images of dais associated with the old Congress which today’s generation found very feudal.

Unlike previous sessions, AICC session this year also decided to have TV panel discussion format on pre-chosen themes rather than long monologues of leaders and workers which bored everyone to death in the past. For this reason, for the first day, subjects like media, communication and common heritage were picked up.

Sources in the Congress say that the new format was chosen to give fresh life to Sessions which used to be long and tiring. Though the Session is all about the assertion of Rahul Gandhi as a leader of United Congress, the purpose was also to connect the younger audience with freedom movement and Congress. It is for this reason, the Plenary started with a black and white video of Mahatma Gandhi leading the freedom struggle.