The Hindu : Cong. bracing for poll challenges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 26, 2003

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National

Cong. bracing for poll challenges

By Javed M Ansari

NEW DELHI JUNE 25. The Congress is engaged in reinventing itself and acquiring a new USP as it prepares to face the electoral challenge of 2004. The main thrust of its Shimla brainstorming session from July 7 to 9 is to provide a rationale for why the electorate should prefer India's grand old party at the hustings.

The three-day conclave is expected to help the party define its position on issues of critical import such as the political challenges, election preparedness, organisational reforms and its stand on people-oriented governance and social empowerment.

The last such interaction — at least on the scale proposed at Shimla — was held at Pachmarhi in the wake of the defeat in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections. Though the Shimla exercise is being held just months ahead of the Assembly polls later this year, the aim is to prepare the Congress for the bigger electoral battle for 2004.

The unstated objective of the conclave, according to a senior CWC leader, is to help the party come out with a new vision and help project it as the "party of the future".

"We must define and position ourselves in a manner that will enthuse, attract and excite the young Indian voters" who account for about 50 per cent of the electorate.

The position papers being prepared by the sub-committees will form the basis of discussions and the outcome will then be adopted as the party policy. Attention will, of course, be primarily focussed on the political challenges before the party. Issues of communalism, secularism and national security will be discussed.

However, the most important issue will be the party's stand on coalitions and alliances.

Though the party president, Sonia Gandhi, has expressed the willingness to go in for alliances, the expectation is that the party's position will be clearly defined. "We will not go into the specifics of the alliances that we propose to strike but we will make our position clear unambiguously," says a committee member.

There will not be a separate policy paper on economics this time but the issue may be discussed under topic heads such as social empowerment. The over-riding economic message from the meeting will be the reiteration of the position adopted at the April convention of Congress Block presidents — that of the party repositioning itself on the side of the poor.

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