The Hindu : Congress begins fine-tuning poll strategy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003

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National

Congress begins fine-tuning poll strategy

By Javed M. Ansari

The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, at the Seva Dal flag ceremony in Shimla on Monday. — PTI

Shimla July 7. After drawing the ideological battle lines, the Congress today got down to fine-tuning its electoral strategy at its brainstorming session here. According to the agenda papers being circulated for discussion, the party has identified for special attention 132 Lok Sabha seats where it lost by less than 50,000 votes in the 1999 general election. In 77 of these seats, the Congress lost by a margin of less than 7 per cent.

In a significant change from the Pachmarhi Declaration of 1998, the party is now considering the proposition of entering into both pre and post-poll alliances with like-minded parties. Another proposal envisages the announcement of candidates for the Lok Sabha three months before the election and Vidhan Sabha candidates six months in advance in order to give them more time to concentrate on their constituencies. There is another proposal to announce the State election teams well in advance so they can work as an arrowhead and fine-tune the party machinery for the electoral battle. The party is also thinking of banning the entry of non-Congress men during the ticket distribution to avoid heartburn in the organisation. The party has asked for a constituency-wise task force to visit these vulnerable constituencies and help chalk out the strategy.

On a nationwide basis, the working paper on poll preparedness feels that the Congress needs to capture at least an additional 10 per cent of the vote to form a Government on its own. It should concentrate on the tribals, the OBCs and the minorities and it believes there is a "wave of seething resentment" in tribal areas running south from Nepal to the Telangana region. It has called for an imaginative initiative to attract these voters.

The suggestions being made at the panel discussion call for a strong secular line combined with affirmative action for the minorities. One such proposal mooted in the discussion on social empowerment says that all the forest produce should be handed over to the tribals and the Forest Conservation Act should be amended and strictly enforced. Among the other measures being discussed is reservation in the private sector. On the Kerala and Karnataka models, the party seems in favour of extending reservation to minorities as a part of the overall reservation granted to the Other Backward Castes and the speedy adoption of the Women's Reservation Bill.

As part of the discussions of poll preparedness, the Congress is mulling over measures to reach out to the intelligentsia, beefing up its media department and involving the Youth Congress and the NSUI to attract the young and take the party's message to the youth. The aim is a concentrated offensive to attract the educated and upwardly mobile professionals among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The document on political challenges has identified the BJP as the biggest challenge to the country and believes there is a need to fight it both intellectual and electoral level. The Congress believes that the BJP has changed the grammar and the metaphor of the public discourse and this need to be changed. The document says, "the centrepiece of our roadmap to re-occupy the cent restage of national politics must be the formulation of a comprehensive and effective strategy to counter the BJP."

Today's discussions were broken up into five sub-groups each covering different subjects. Each delegate was assigned a group based on his or her expertise. The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee moved from group to group to coordinate the discussions.

The party is still discussing these proposals and a final decision will be put in a resolution to be announced on Wednesday.

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