New Delhi: The three-day All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session starting in Delhi on Saturday may debate a perceptible change in the strategy.
Smarting under the humiliating defeat in the Bihar state assembly elections where the party could win just four out of 243 seats at stake, India's ruling party is expected to do away with the policy of going it alone in state polls for the time being. This virtually means, out of the five states slated to go to polls in the next few months, barring Assam, the Congress party may contest elections Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry (formerly known as Pondicherry), the Congress party will have pre-poll alliances.
"Bihar polls have taught us the lesson that bravado doesn't pay in politics. Assam we are strong enough to be on our own, but in the rest of the four states, we have to look for allies," said a general secretary of the Congress party.
The Congress party had contested the 2006 polls in both Tamil Nadu and Puducherry as an ally of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) while it led the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, which is in the opposition.
In West Bengal, although the Congress party contested last year's parliamentary elections as a junior partner to the regional Trinamool Congress, it contested civic elections on its own with limited success. Although the Marxists are salted to lose power in its traditional bastions of West Bengal and Kerala, the Congress party does not want to play spoilsport in its enthusiasm to broad base its roots in various states.
"We may decide to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh where the elections are still good one and a half years away. Since we are heading a coalition government at the centre, it will be politically prudent to go in for alliances in states as well," said the Congress leader.
The three-day session being held in Burari village will culminate the year-long celebrations of the foundation of the party 125 years ago.
The session is also expected to discuss the allegations of corruption s well as the opposition forcing a complete washout of the concluded winter session in view of the opposition's announcement that it may force Parliament logjam when it meets for the budget session.
