Cong. bid to woo voters in Himachal

State unit chief kick-starts ‘padayatra’, ‘jan jagran’ in all constituencies to oust BJP

Buoyed over its performance in the recently concluded Assembly and Parliamentary bypolls, the Congress party in Himachal Pradesh has set the ball rolling by up-swinging the tempo of its electioneering for the Assembly elections due next year

The party, led by State unit president Kuldeep Singh Rathore, has kick-started a State-wide ‘padayatra’ and ‘jan jagran’ programme to consolidate its support base across all 68 Assembly constituencies.

In an attempt to strengthen the party, especially in the constituencies where it is relatively weak, Mr. Rathore has started ‘padayatra’ to understand the pain-points of the party and prepare strategy.

As a part of the ‘jan jagran’ programme, the party MLAs and ex-MLAs have started reaching out to people and make aware them of the Congress’s ideology and policies, besides exposing the misdeeds of the BJP Governments in the State and at the Centre.

“The Congress has won the ‘semi-final’ by defeating the BJP in the bypolls. Now, we will win the Assembly election in December next year. The party workers are excited after the recent win. We are making people aware about the ill-conceived policies of the BJP, which has caused inflation, unemployment, corruption creating hardships for the people of the State,” said Mr. Rathore.

‘Cadre motivated’

“The people of the State have rejected the BJP and acknowledged the Congress in the recent bypolls. The cadre is motivated and wants to ensure that the BJP is defeated in 2022. I have already started a ‘padayatra' to visit all those constituencies where we have not been winning for the past few years, the aim is to understand the reasons for our weakness and then prepare the strategy. There are around 22 Assembly constituencies where we are a little weak and I’ll be visiting all these constituencies in a phased manner over the next few months,” Mr. Rathore told The Hindu .

“We have started membership drive from today (Friday). The focus would be to increase the membership of the party and a mechanism will be developed to ensure that the membership is genuine,” he said.