Rahul calls CMs’ meet Dec. 27

After realising that price rise was the key issue behind the Congress debacle in the recent Assembly polls in four states in the Hindi belt, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has called a meeting of party chief ministers here on December 27 to fine-tune strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi on Tuesday said the purpose of the meeting of party chief ministers is to discuss the future course in the wake of the passage of the Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill.
Immediately after the results of the Assembly elections in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were out, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had listed price rise as an issue that could have led to the rout of the party in these states. “Perhaps price rise was also an issue. It was affecting people,” she had said.
Mr Dwivedi said the Congress CMs’ meeting will also discuss food security. “The issue of price rise will also be raised in the meeting. What steps are be taken to arrest rising prices will be discussed,” Mr Dwivedi said.
The Congress has chief ministers in 12 states — Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam, Haryana, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
Besides AICC treasurer Motilal Vora and ministers A.K. Antony, Sushilkumar Shinde, P. Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh, the Congress president’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel, Mr Janardan Dwivedi, AICC general secretary and communications department chief Ajay Maken and the general secretaries in charge of states will attend the meeting. It is unclear whether or not Mrs Sonia Gandhi will attend.
Mrs Gandhi had earlier held such meetings at Mount Abu, Guwahati, Srinagar, Chandigarh and Nainital. She undertook the exercise first when the Congress was in the Opposition and continued to do so when the UPA came to power at the Centre in 2004.