AICC session in Ahmedabad may give two clear political messages, focus on revival

Last December, when the Congress leadership decided during the party’s special session in Karnataka’s Belgaum that the next AICC Session would be held in April 2025 in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, the decision’s symbolism wasn’t lost on anyone.

Today (April 8), as 1,725 delegates, including the Congress high command and its colleagues in the party’s extended working committee, arrive in Ahmedabad for the two-day session, what the party and its sympathisers would hope for isn’t mere symbolism but an actionable roadmap for the party’s organisational and electoral recovery.

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At the Belgaum Session, which marked the centenary year of Mahatma Gandhi’s presidency of the party, the Congress Working Committee pledged 2025 to sanghathan srijan (organisation building). The Ahmedabad Session, party leaders say, is expected to provide a blueprint for implementing that pledge while simultaneously sending two unambiguous political messages.

Two political messages

Firstly, the session, with its theme of 'Nyay Path: Sankalp, Samarpan, Sangharsh' (Path of Justice: Resolve, Dedicate, Struggle), is meant to reaffirm that the Congress is the true and only flag bearer of the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, both Gujarat-born Congress stalwarts from India’s freedom movement. Over the past decade, the BJP has sought to aggressively appropriate Patel, who banned the RSS after the assassination of the Mahatma, but who Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP-Sangh Parivar ecosystem have, since 2014, built up as a nationalist titan wronged by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Congress party.

Secondly, the Congress leadership wants the AICC Session in Ahmedabad – the first such party conclave in the state since the Bhavnagar Session of 1961 – to serve as a bold battle cry against the BJP ahead of the 2026 assembly polls in Gujarat, the home state of Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The Congress has been out of power in the western state since 1995.

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As members of the extended Congress Working Committee meet at the Sardar Patel Memorial today and then join the over 1,700 party delegates from across the country for the AICC session on Wednesday (April 9) at the banks of the Sabarmati river between Sabarmati Ashram and Kochrab Ashram, they would reassert these messages. The CWC, which is expected to pass some key resolutions, will also pledge the party’s abiding faith in the ideals of Gandhi and Patel.

Electoral rejuvenation the focus

For a party that pushed its seat tally in the Lok Sabha up from 52 in 2019 to 99 seats last June before losing momentum and crashing out in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jammu, symbolism alone isn’t a remedy for organisational and electoral rejuvenation. It is towards these revival plans that discussions in Ahmedabad are expected to focus.

Sources in the party say that nuanced discussions and decisive announcements may not come out of Ahmedabad, reserved as these always are in the Congress for “closed-door deliberations among a select group of leaders”.

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“What you can expect are broadly three things: first, some roadmap for organisational overhaul; second, an outline of issues on which the Congress wants to corner the BJP while also seeking common cause with other parties of the INDIA bloc and finally, a lot of pep talk for party workers and supporters to show that the party is geared towards electoral recovery,” said a senior party leader who is part of the committee tasked with drafting the resolutions that the extended CWC will endorse later today.

Key issues

Sources say the drafting committee has identified a slew of issues on which it would recommend the CWC to take a “clear stand against the Centre”. A bulk of these issues, it is learnt, are those Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has been steadfast in raising, such as the need for a Caste Census, building communal harmony, the Centre’s failure in tackling inflation and unemployment, the persistent threat to India’s sovereign and economic interests from China and, more recently, the new challenges arising for India out of US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose reciprocal tariffs.

These issues, sources in the drafting committee told The Federal, could find a mention in the political resolution adopted by the CWC. The party would also reaffirm its ‘fight to save the Constitution from the BJP’s assaults’ on issues of federalism, secularism, and undermining of institutions, including Parliament. Party leaders said by invoking each of these issues, the Congress leadership would also seek to reach out to allies in a bid to resuscitate the INDIA bloc that has been gasping for breath in recent months, burdened by fragile egos of leaders of constituent parties and the electoral humiliations heaped by the BJP in Maharashtra and Haryana.

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It is unclear whether the party would also reiterate the firm stand it took in the just-concluded session of Parliament against the Waqf Amendment Act. Sources say a section of party leaders not just limited to those from the Muslim community have urged the high command to take a “very clear, firm, and bold stand” on the Waqf issue and also call out the “BJP’s nefarious plans to use the template set by the Waqf Bill to target other religious minorities in future”.

Regurgitation of pledges

While the aforementioned issues revolve around the roadmap the Congress is expected to draft for its fight against the BJP and engagement with INDIA allies, what would, arguably, be most anticipated are the announcements the party makes regarding its own organisational revival. On this score, though, those expecting a radical course correction may be disappointed. The session would likely see only a regurgitation of the many pledges that the party had taken for its organisational revamp three years ago in its Nav Sankalp Udaipur Declaration only to consign them to cold storage soon after.

“Most measures that we need to take for strengthening the organisation, building new leadership, and improving the way we fight elections were all laid out in the Udaipur Declaration… that document had everything, from setting up an election strategy unit and a feedback (public insight) department to applying new rules in organisational appointments and ticket distribution like ‘one person, one post’ and ‘one family, one ticket’, but all of it was forgotten as soon as the Udaipur Session ended,” a senior AICC functionary and party MP told The Federal.

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The functionary added, “The leadership may bring some of these back to the table (in Ahmedabad)… some new measures like giving district Congress chiefs a greater say in the party’s decision-making process and ticket distribution may also be announced. But I doubt there will be any truly revolutionary or disruptive announcement from the leadership.”