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The Congress Working Committee (CWC) is the executive committee of the Indian National Congress. It typically consists of fifteen members elected from the All India Congress Committee. It is headed by the Working President.
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The Working Committee has had different levels of in the party at different times. In the period prior to 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 bosses including Kamaraj, Prafulla Chandra Sen, Ajoy Mukherjee, and Morarji Desai), 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 as coming from the "High Command".