Congress quietly cancels AICC session to mark 125 years

The Congress is quietly dropping an All India Congress Committee session planned in New Delhi on December 28, to kick off the year-long celebrations of the party completing 125 years.

Instead, a small function is now being planned for Sonia Gandhi to lay the foundation stone of the new AICC building to come up on the Deendayal Upadhyay Marg off Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, the fleet street of Delhi.

The AICC headquarters is currently located on the government premises at 24 Akbar Road, next to Sonia Gandhi's residence at 10 Janpath, but it will be vacated following the allotment of separate land at the new location.

The party had been earlier allotted another piece of land, at a walking distance from Parliament House, but the building that came up on it was subsequently handed over to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation as its headquarters.

This will be for the third time since the Congress swept to victory in the Lok Sabha elections to lead the United Progressive Alliance government in its second term that the AICC session was planned and then subsequently cancelled without giving any reason.