Congress to release poll manifesto on April 6, ‘Nyay’ pillar in focus

Senior Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Malikajun Haq and Rahul Gandhi (file photo).

New Delhi:

The Congress will release its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which is expected to contain a number of social welfare promises and 25 guarantees, including five each under “””.Mother “Pillar (of justice)” – April 6, the party’s Rajasthan leader Govind Singh Dotasara said on Thursday afternoon in Jaipur.

The grand event will be attended by senior Congress leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Malikajun Haq as well as senior members of the party’s state unit.

The Congress party is the leader of India’s opposition group, which was formed last June to counter the powerful electoral winning machinery of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In January, the party solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Former Union minister Chidambaram, who headed the framework committee, called it a “people’s manifesto”.

“In addition to the public consultation … in each state, Congress has set up an email account and a suggestion website,” he said. “The party will adopt as many suggestions as possible.”

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who has been nominated to defend the Thiruvananthapuram seat, said the manifesto will focus on unemployment, rising prices, income support for the poor, as well as women’s rights and the condition of farmers. Mention is also expected to be made on the contentious MSP (minimum support price), which was at the center of farmers’ protests in 2020 and earlier this year.

The party is also expected to pledge strict laws to punish those responsible for leaking exam papers and propose measures to ensure transparency in public service recruitment.

The Congress party said voters raised many of these points and others that will be included in the manifesto to Rahul Gandhi during his second ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.

But issues of greater concern include the party’s stance on the subject of the National Caste Survey and its response to the revised citizenship law. In its manifesto for the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections, the party promised to order such a probe in the state.

The choice of Rajasthan for the manifesto is interesting. The Congress has not won a Lok Sabha seat in the state since the 2009 elections. In 2014 and 2019, driven by the “Modi wave”, the BJP defeated its rivals, winning all 25 seats in the former and 24 seats in the latter.

In the 2019 elections, the 25th seat was won by the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, an ally of the BJP.

Rajasthan is also where the Congress suffered a crushing defeat in last year’s assembly elections. The party won 70 seats (compared with 100 five years ago), while the BJP won 115 seats.

On the other hand, the 45-seat gap hides a close battle. The BJP’s vote share was only 2.14% more than the Congress party’s 39.55%, which itself increased by 0.23% from the 2018 election.

Rajasthan, part of the “Hindi heartland”, has favored the BJP in the past, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party hopes that the state will see people come to join politics in large numbers to continue this tradition.

If the saffron party is to achieve its target of 370 seats in the Lok Sabha and more than 400 seats for the party-led NDA, it will be important here and in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bengal. Strong performance will be crucial. Rajasthan and the above-mentioned four states have a total of 235 seats in the House of Representatives.

If the Congress party is able to disrupt the electoral machinery of the BJP in Rajasthan, it may go some way to ensuring that Modi and his party do not become leader of the party at the Center for a third consecutive time.

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