Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K. Selvaperunthagai and other senior leaders participated in an internal party meeting to strategise and deliberate on how to strengthen the Congress party at the grassroots-level in Tamil Nadu at Sathyamurthy Bhavan here on Wednesday.
Senior Congress leader Peter Alphonse said that he would be heading a special task force, comprising four people who will work out of Chennai along with 13 others, for a period of 60 days.
“It will have four members, who will work from Chennai. Three Parliamentary seats will be clubbed and one zonal in-charge will be appointed. So, a total of 13 zonal in-charges will be appointed. Each of the 39 Parliamentary seats and 234 Assembly seats will also have their own in-charge,” said Mr. Alphonse.
Mr. Alphonse said that the Congress party’s losses in recent times could be attributed to the failure of the party in taking forward an ideological discourse and its failure to create a well-structured unit, like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
“The biggest strength of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is that they have last mile connectivity – they are there in every village. We are forming a special task force. This is not an effort to form booth committees,” he said. Mr. Alphonse said that there should be a Congress committee in every village panchayat in the State.
“In all of the 12,425 village panchayats, there should be a functioning Congress committee. Even today, there will be Congress people, but we need to accept that the committees are not functioning ones. Each committee should have a president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary and 5 committee members. If we achieve this successfully, there would be 1,24,250 active Congressmen. Similarly, we have to establish such committees in 138 municipalities and 490 town panchayats. In the 25 corporations, only AICC can form District Congress Committees,” he said.
Ajoy Kumar, AICC in-charge of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry urged the party office-bearers to “be honest with their work” and resolve grievances privately.
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Published – January 09, 2025 01:18 am IST