The Congress on Sunday sounded the poll bugle for the 2019 general election as the newly constituted Congress Working Committee (CWC), in its first meeting, authorised party president Rahul Gandhi to decide on “alliances with like-minded parties” to stop the BJP from returning to power.
“We are setting up a group that is going to do this,” Mr. Gandhi told reporters after a marathon five- hour meet of the extended CWC, where more than 35 people spoke and discussed a broad road map for the crucial Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and the next Lok Sabha polls.
The CWC also decided to launch nationwide mass campaigns over issues such as “agrarian distress, unemployment, economic slowdown, and incidents of attacks on Dalits and tribals.”
“He particularly said the Congress party’s first duty is to work for India’s farmers, women, dalits, adivasis, backwards, minorities and the deprived,” said Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi, senior Congress leaders A.K. Anthony, Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Ghulam Nabi Azad at the Congress Working Committee in New Delhi on Sunday.
Apart from alliances, sources told The Hindu there were discussions on improving the Congress’s election management, especially at the booth level, a clear strategy to avoid polarising debates and doubts about EVMs.
Without naming anyone, in his opening remarks, Mr. Gandhi said he did not mind leaders expressing themselves freely within party fora but shouldn’t say or express anything that weakened the Congress when it was in the middle of an electoral battle.
Senior Congress leaders including Shashi Tharoor, Salman Khurshid and the now suspended leader Mani Shankar Aiyar have courted controversy with their public statements.
Several leaders, including Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh and former minister R.P.N. Singh suggested that Mr. Gandhi should be the leader of the Opposition alliance to take on the BJP.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh criticised “the culture of self-praise and jumlas” and dismissed the Modi government’s claim of doubling farm incomes by 2022.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi talked about how an atmosphere of hatred and fear was being spread by the present government and claimed that Prime Minister Modi’s statements showed “a sense of desperation and nervousness.”
In the closed-door meeting, the Congress chief said the expansion of the party’s vote base was one of the biggest challenges. “In each constituency, we have to find people who have not voted for us and develop a strategy to reach out to them and win back their trust,” he is learnt to have said.
Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told the CWC that the Congress tally could go up to 150 (over three times its 2014 tally) in 12 States where the party is in direct fight with the BJP. In other States, allies can help reach it closer to the Lok Sabha majority of 272. Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot, however, stressed that the Congress should be the pivot of any grand alliance to take on the BJP.
Former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah claimed that despite fulfilling all promises, the party lost because of religious polarisation in the coastal region.
