Congress young turks reach out to Modi's youth votebank

BENGALURU: The Congress has turned its young turks in election-bound Karnataka to woo the millenials who have so far been the staunch vote-bank of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“We are saying that the Congress is with the youth . We are showcasing the youth leadership that we have and telling them we want to listen to your aspirations and work with you to achieve them,” the state’s agriculture minister Krishna Byre Gowda (44) told ET.

The outreach called “Nanna Karnataka” (my Karnataka) with about 500 students drawn from colleges, who don’t belong to the Congress youth or student wings, is to be launched on Tuesday in Bengaluru, just a day after Mohammad Nalapad Harris, the son of Congress MLA N A Harris was arrested for assaulting another youth. Nalapad has been expelled for six years from the party and the state government has come down harshly on the police who delayed in arresting him.


“Yes the timing is a bit off, but we are ready to take questions on that issue also,” Gowda said. “We genuinely want to listen to what the youth are saying and what they want from their government,” he added.

Unlike the BJP, which regularly holds youth interactions and discussions with their leaders, this is the first time the Congress party is directly reaching out to youths across class, gender and caste and asking them to voice their aspirations. “We will be holding about 100 townhalls with youngsters aged between 17 to 27. Ten young leaders in the Congress will interact with them, take questions, share their thoughts,” former state Youth Congress president and MLC Rizwan Arshad told ET.

Arshad contended that no political party was currently speaking to the youth or finding out what they wanted or gave them any role in governance. “Congress stands for what youngsters want. Youngsters are inclusive, progressive. They are not worried about mandir-masjid. They care about the future, jobs, development. Congress, like them, believes in freedom of speech, expression, freedom to live, eat, love, marry. We are on the same page as the youngsters, we only need a platform to connect with them,” he stated.

The party will issue online and offline invitations for the townhalls to be held across the state, which will also be livestreamed on the web and on Facebook. The participating leaders, including state working president Dinesh Gundu Rao, national social media head Divya Spandana (Ramya) and IT minister Priyank Kharge, will answer questions and take suggestions on the social media platform also.