New Delhi: Meghalaya Congress is embarking on a massive membership enrolment drive with a target of enrolling more than one lakh new members in the party, MPCC president D.D. Lapang said here on Tuesday.
He was speaking at the first-ever formal interaction of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi with party leaders after the massive defeat of the party in the Lok Sabha election succeeded by a string of defeats in assembly polls across the country.
Addressing the leaders, Rahul said that the party’s organizational elections should be utilized to ‘reinvigorate and rejuvenate’ the party following the debacle in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
He wanted the organizational elections to be free, fair and transparent to make the party fighting fit.
Lapang pointed out that despite total defeat in many states, in Meghalaya the Congress retained one Lok Sabha seat and put a spirited battle in the other seat (Tura) where it had faced a formidable rival in Purno A Sangma.
General secretaries in-charge of states and a number of PCC chiefs besides members of the party’s election authority participated in the meeting.
Election of the Congress chief is scheduled between July 5 and July 25 next, by which time the organizational polls at the lower level would be over. Sonia Gandhi has been at the helm of the party since March 1998 and holds the distinction of having the longest tenure as the head of the party which was founded way back in 1885.