Election manifesto: SC/STs, OBCs lead Congress agenda work

NEW DELHI: After its humiliating defeat in the assembly elections, Congress has started work on vice-president Rahul Gandhi's promise to reconnect with the common man. The party, which opened up its manifesto-framing exercise to the people in October, would hold public consultations with a wide cross-section of electorate and finalise the document by February first week.


The public consultations began with an interaction with representatives of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes at Jawahar Bhawan on Friday evening. This would be followed by similar public consultations with representatives of minorities, women, youth and students and entrepreneurs and industry.

Speaking to mediapersons after the consultation at Jawahar Bhawan, senior minister and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, "Working on Rahulji's suggestions we have opened up the manifesto framing process. We launched our website on October 23 and have so far received around 9,000 suggestions. For the first time we have sought suggestions from the state and district Congress committees. This consultation process will be wrapped up by the end of this month and we hope to finalise the document by first week of February. After this we want a wide-ranging debate on our vision document."


In its first public consultation with SC, ST and OBCs on Friday, the party received suggestions on reservation in private sector jobs and a central legislation on Scheduled Caste sub-plan (SCSP) and tribal sub-plan (TSP). Congress SC department head K Raju said, "The main suggestion emanating from the consultation today was a central legislation on SCSP and TSP because they see this it as an instrument to accelerate the development of Scheduled Castes and Tribes. So far the money allocated under these plans have not been utilised fully or diverted. To address this, the suggestion was to have a legislation along the lines of the one introduced by Andhra Pradesh last year and by Karnataka government a week back."

Congress is also planning to include state issues in its vision document. "This document will not just be a national manifesto. But it will also deal with important issues of regional and state importance. We want to deal with long-pending state issues," Ramesh said.

Gandhi was also present in the first public consultation, which lasted for about 6 hours. Ramesh said that this is a part of Gandhi's vision to open up the political process. "His aim is to open doors of politics. He says that so far manifesto has been prepared by seven people behind closed doors. He wants to change this tradition. This process has now been initiated with this exercise," Ramesh said.