The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is the

executive committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

of the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...

. It was formed in December 1920 at Nagpur session of INC which was headed by C. Vijayaraghavachariar. It typically consists of fifteen members elected from the All India Congress Committee. It is headed by the Working President. Gandhi Patel 1940

The Working Committee has had different levels of power in the party at different times. In the period prior to Indian independence in 1947, the Working Committee was the centre of power, and the Working President was frequently more active than the Congress President. In the period after 1967, when the Congress Party split for the first time (between factions loyal to Indira Gandhi and those led by the Syndicate of regional leaders including

Kamaraj Kumaraswami Kamaraj (15 July 1903 – 2 October 1975, hinduonnet.com. 15–28 September 2001), popularly known as Kamarajar was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Madras State (Tamil Nadu) ...

Prafulla Chandra Sen Prafulla Chandra Sen (10 April 1897 – 25 September 1990) was an Indian politician and freedom fighter. He was the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1962 to 1967. Background Prafulla Chandra Sen was born in the village Senhati in the Khulna ...

, Ajoy Mukherjee, and

Morarji Desai Morarji Ranchhodji Desai (29 February 1896 – 10 April 1995) was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the 4th Prime Minister of India between 1977 to 1979 leading the government formed by the Janata Party. During his ...

), the power of the Working Committee declined; but Indira Gandhi's triumph in 1971 led to a re-centralisation of power away from the states and the All-India Congress Committee and caused the Working Committee in Delhi to once again be the paramount decision-making body of the party. The centralised nature of Congress decision making has since caused observers in the states to informally describe instructions from

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

as coming from the "High Command".

Composition of Steering Committee

President Members

Permanent Invitees

Special Invitees

Criticism

The Congress has not held internal elections to CWC for nearly 20 years and last elections were held in 1998. In 2017 Election Commission ordered it to hold internal elections but as of 2020 no elections were held. When Congress was trying to forge an alliance with ideologically opposite Shiv Sena in Maharashtra in 2019, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam publicly urged Sonia Gandhi to dissolve the CWC, saying "they cannot be trusted anymore." A paper by

Observer Research Foundation Observer Research Foundation (ORF) is an independent global think tank based in Delhi, India. The foundation has three centres in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. ORF provides potentially viable inputs for policy and decision-makers in the Indian ...

calls a large number of CWC members "unprincipled, opportunists and self-serving individuals for whom self-interest is paramount."

References

External links