The Hindu : Front Page : Congress draws up strategy to blunt Opposition’s campaign

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Sunday, Aug 19, 2007
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Congress draws up strategy to blunt Opposition’s campaign

Special Correspondent

Leaders ask workers to take lead in highlighting Government programmes

HYDERABAD: The Congress party has decided to blunt the Opposition’s campaign against its governance by directly involving its workers in preparing the lists of beneficiaries and supervising the welfare programmes.

Be it housing, pension or ration cards, Congress workers led by their MLAs will henceforth prepare the lists and hand them over to Government officials to secure political mileage. Sanction proceedings would be handed over to the beneficiaries by the party workers themselves.

This decision was taken at the combined extended meeting of PCC and Congress Legislature Party held here on Saturday to review the party’s preparedness in the event of early elections and to counter land struggles. APCC president K. Keshava Rao, Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy and AICC secretary Iqbal Singh asked workers to play a major role in the disbursement of benefits to the people.

Reeling out statistics concerning Indiramma, disbursal of pensions, ration card distribution and ‘Arogya Sri’, these Congress leaders said that the Government was delivering on its election promises, but the party was lagging behind in capitalising on these achievements. To the irritation of the PCC president, senior leader G. Venkata Swamy, MP, said that the Government was doing its best but the party was not up to the mark in owning up the programmes.

Criticism

The leaders were of the view that the scope for criticism by the Opposition could be eliminated if the party workers were involved since the goal of all these programmes was to reach saturation levels, that is to reach out to all eligible persons, say 70 lakh in housing and 50 lakh in pensions.

The enrolment process would be called “Indiramma Sambaralu” and the details of the beneficiaries would be hosted on a website by the PCC to ensure transparency, Dr. Keshava Rao later told reporters. All Indiramma beneficiaries would be proud owners of houses painted with a tricolour band and stuck with a porcelain plaque of Indira Gandhi’s picture.

The meeting unanimously flayed Opposition’s attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear agreement, he added.

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