If Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s first major post-elections meeting with party was with the Scheduled Caste cell, his first experiment to create a new SC leadership as part of the effort to rebuild the party will also begin in the SC cell, in Rajasthan.
This comes in the wake of the realisation in the Congress leadership that with the BJP’s rise, the party needs to win back its old support base, Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins, a senior party functionary said.
For many years now, the SC cell — like the party’s other such departments — had become marginalised from the mainstream. The appointment of ex-IAS officer K Raju — earlier with the National Advisory Council — to head the SC cell was seen a signal that things would change, that the cell’s State units also needed to be given a similar high profile.
Rajasthan, therefore, becomes the first State in which seven senior SC leaders from the State will head separate divisions, overseeing a relatively small area, four to six districts. A committee consisting of party general secretary in-charge of the State Gurudas Kamat, PCC chief Sachin Pilot and Mr. Raju held interviews with shortlisted candidates and selected Tikaram Julie (Jaipur), Prashant Bairwa(Ajmer), Bharat Ram Meghwal(Bikaner), Rakesh Boyat (Kota), Goparam Meghwal (Jodhpur), RD Jawa (Udaipur) and Bharosi Lal Jatav (Bharatpur).
This project is being touted as “a paradigm shift in the Congress.. indicative of the seriousness accorded to the SC Department by the Congress leadership,” party sources said.
