Cong top leaders against plan to appoint Preraks'

New Delhi: A proposal to appoint “Preraks” or motivators to train and skill Congress workers in propagating the party’s ideology ran into rough waters over the coinage of the term with senior leaders, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi objecting to it.

The issue was discussed at a meeting of Congress general secretaries, CLP leaders and PCC chiefs which interestingly was not attended by Rahul Gandhi.

Proposed as part of the new training programme the party’s training department, headed by Sachin Rao, has formed, the “Preraks” would have been coordinators at all levels who would train new as well as experienced and old Congress workers.

However, as soon as the concept note was circulated, senior leader Mukul Wasnik said that the word “Prerak” sounds too close to the RSS word Pracharak and it was not proper for the Congress to sound so similar to the BJP’s ideological head.

At this point none other than Ms Gandhi said that she had also read about it in some media reports and the Congress should stick to calling the trainers just coordinators or “Sahayaks”. Soon other leaders followed suit.

Sources said that the idea of having “Preraks” or coordinators was first mooted by former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi at a meeting on September 3 to formulate the training module.

Mr Gogoi had said that the Congress had a concept in earlier days of holding Padyatras and Prabhat Pheris and such things should also be revived.

A senior leader said that the party initially intends to appoint one coordinator each in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and the number can them go up.

The party also took a call to start a new membership drive. The membership drive would be done both digitally and on paper. Interestingly, the Congress would not use the much villified Shakti App which was blamed for giving a pumped up figure of Congress members before the Lok Sabha polls.

Though there has been no target set for the membership drive which would begin from December, it would go on till 2022.

The decisions were taken at a meeting of Congress general secretaries, CLP leaders, Pradesh Congress presidents and other senior leaders like former PM Manmohan Singh and party treasurer Ahmed Patel.

Interestingly, former Congress president and MP from Wayanad Rahul Gandhi was not present in the meeting.

While Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and Rajasthan chief  minister Ashok Gehlot and Puducherry CM V. Narayanasamy were present at the meeting, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath and Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Bhagel had not been present at the meeting.