Pranab, Rahul in resolution panel

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Folk artistes wait outside Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s residence at 10, Janpath in New Delhi on her 65th birthday on Thurs

With plenary session of the party scheduled here for December 19 and 20, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has constituted a resolution drafting committee under the chairmanship of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee of which young leader Rahul Gandhi is also a member. The party proposes to adopt three — political, economic and foreign affairs — resolutions during its meet.
This is the second plenary after the Congress-led UPA came to power in 2004 and the first after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, in which the coalition retained power with the Congress crossing the 200-mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha after a gap of over 15 years.
Congress leaders are tight-lipped on the party’s line on coalition politics at the plenary.
At the Hyderabad plenary in 2006, Mr Gandhi had made it clear that the Congress cannot abdicate its political space while carrying on the coalition experiment.
Prominent among those in the draft committee are senior leaders Arjun Singh, A.K. Antony, Digvijay Singh, P. Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh.
However, the sub-committee, which will finalise the draft resolution on political situations is headed by Mr Antony. The sub-committee on economic resolution is headed by Mr Mukherjee and the one on foreign affairs is headed by commerce minister Anand Sharma with external affairs minister S.M. Krishna being a prominent member.
After the sub-committees finalise the draft resolutions, the draft committee will pass them.
The resolutions will finally be cleared in a meeting of the subjects committee headed by the Congress president on the first day of the plenary.
“The resolutions will be brought for discussion and adoption before the two-day open session of the plenary only after the subject committee clears it,” a senior party leader said.
The subject committee will have members of the CWC, which has now been converted into a steering committee.