New Delhi, December 23
Faced with desertions from its traditional support base of Scheduled Tribes, the Congress is making renewed attempts to reach out to them.
Party President Sonia Gandhi is taking the lead in this effort and, to begin with, she will address a series of meetings in the tribal areas of Maharashtra next month.
Congress sources said Ms Gandhi would follow up her December 27 public rally in Mumbai with a two-day tour of the state’s tribal belt. According to plans, the Congress President is scheduled to visit the tribal areas of Gadchiroli, Gondhia, Yavatmal, Washim and Nanded in January.
Ms Gandhi’s tour programme comes in the wake of growing realisation that the Congress is fast losing the support of tribals, its traditional vote bank. This was borne out by the results of the recent assembly elections in which the BJP wrested virtually all the ST seats from the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and
Rajasthan. In a belated attempt to make amends, the Congress has appointed tribal candidates to head the legislature party in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
While some effort is being made in this direction, the Congress has to face up to far more challenging tasks if it is to ready itself for the Lok Sabha polls. Some of the issues which have been identified by the Pranab Mukherjee
committee, looking into the reasons for the party’s debacle, include poor poll management, weak party organisation, failure to strike strategic alliances and the over-dependence on Chief Ministers.
The five-member committee, which is working overtime to complete its report, has found that the party organisation in Chhattisgarh was non-existent and in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan it was “substantially weakened” with several district and block committees existing only on paper. In Rajasthan, the party and the government were in constant confrontation and in Chhattisgarh, it was the government and not the party which was supreme.
The feedback from its talks with former Chief Ministers, PCC chiefs, MPs and AICC office bearers, also revealed that the reports from the states were not conveyed accurately to the party central leadership.
There was a general feeling that the party leadership was deliberately misled, party sources said, adding that it was also felt that Chief Ministers should not be given such overeaching powers as was the case in these assembly elections.
For instance, former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is learnt to have told the committee that he did not drop a lot of sitting MLAs, despite their unpopularity, only because they did not carry out any dissidence activity against him.
Addressing the general body meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) on the concluding day of the winter session, Ms Gandhi made a pointed reference to the possibility of the Lok Sabha elections being advanced. She urged partymen to shed their despondency over the setback they suffered in the Assembly elections and move ahead.
“The next few months will see elections in Andhra Pradesh. We cannot rule out the possibility of the Lok Sabha poll being advanced. We have to be totally prepared and ready ourselves for the coming challenge,” Ms Gandhi told the CPP, adding that steps to put together election management teams and strategies were already being taken.
There was no reference to any other remedial measures being contemplated after the Assembly
results nor was there any mention of the weekend resignation drama or the proposed party revamp. There was only an indirect reference to the infighting in the party when Ms Gandhi spoke of the “need for each and everyone of us to work collectively and cohesively in a selfless spirit of cooperation”.
Instead, Ms Gandhi attempted to clear the confusion which had gripped the party rank and file after the BJP defeated it on the issue of good governance which was projected by the Congress as its USP.
While asking Congress-men to stick to its positive and constructive campaign, Ms Gandhi said they must explain clearly the basic differences between the Congress and the BJP. She said it had to be explained that it was only the Congress which pursued economic growth with social harmony, that only the Congress was committed to true panchayati raj and that only the Congress could integrate the policies of economic reforms and social welfare.
Ms Gandhi pointed to the BJP’s systematic campaign to denigrate the achievements of the previous Congress governments at the Centre and warned that this propaganda would only get worse in the months ahead.
Laying down the broad framework for the party’s future strategy, she asked the party to highlight the BJP’s failures and counter its propaganda in a convincing and aggressive manner.
Ms Gandhi also listed out the issues on which the Congress could attack the BJP. “Unemployment is mounting, rural-urban disparities have grown, kisans and khet mazdoors, plantation workers across the country have faced unprecedented distress,” she elaborated adding to the stagnation in industry and agricultural sectors, falling interest rates and the manner in which public sector undertakings were being destroyed.
