Parties riding on youth wings
Prashant Sood

With the Lok Sabha election campaign in full swing, the youth wings of political parties have gained prominence. As footsoldiers, young partymen have the job of wooing first-time voters through door-to-door campaigns, rallies and yatras. The Tribune team reports on how active is the GenNext of politics.

Cong out of sync with the times
FOR a party that reduced the voting age to 18 and initiated economic reforms, the Congress seems far away from catching the imagination of the country’s youth. The party has many second-generation leaders but almost all of them are from Rajiv Gandhi’s time. With sons and daughters of its established leaders occupying the limited slots for young leaders, the party has been unable to build a youth leadership in the past decade.

Backroom boys keep BJP on track
S. Satyanaryanan
IF the present profile of BJP leaders is any indication, the party appears to be giving an important role to its youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. Whether it is the present BJP President M. Venkaiah Naidu or the party’s General Secretaries Pramod Mahajan and M.A. Naqvi or Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Shahnawaz Hussain, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Ravi Shankar Prasad, all of them have served the BJYM in some capacity or the other.

Youth wings in poll mode
JD(U): Age of continuity Tripti Nath THE Janata Dal (United) may have been behind time in appointing office-bearers of its youth wing — the Yuva Janata Dal (United), but it is confident that its army of committed young workers will do their best to ensure the party’s victory in the forthcoming elections.	Young at the centre of Left politics R. Suryamurthy YOUTH power will be very much visible in the first general election of the 21st century. Since about 50 per cent of the total electorate of 653 million consists of the youth, the Gen Next of political parties is expected to be a major presence in the poll arena.