Congress To Launch Jharkhand Poll Campaign On Nov 5, Focus On INDIA Bloc Achievements

The Congress will focus its campaign on BJP's alleged targeting of tribal leaders with false cases against the CM and bid to destabilise Soren’s government.

New Delhi:The Congress is set to launch its Jharkhand poll campaign next week from November 5 when party chief Mallikarjun Kharge will address two rallies in the tribal state. Former party chief Rahul Gandhi will follow up by addressing around six rallies across the state on November 8 and 9. Jharkhand will have phase 1 polling on November 13 for which the campaign will end on November 11.

According to party insiders, the focus of the campaign is going to be on the 29 Congress seats where the grand old party will highlight the achievements of the coalition government headed by Chief Minister Hemant Soren.

Besides, the Congress will base its campaign on the BJP’s targeting of the tribal leadership through false cases against the Chief Minister and the saffron party’s past attempts to destabilise Soren’s government. During the period that Hemant spent in jail in a corruption case, former leader Champai Soren was made the Chief Minister, but later joined the BJP as he was miffed over being removed from the post after Hemant got bail.

The JMM-Congress-RJD coalition government came to power in the state in 2019 and hopes to repeat it based on the work done in the past, especially the welfare agenda rolled out over the past few weeks. This time, the coalition has also shared some seats with the CPI-ML with the JMM getting 41, Congress 29, RJD seven and the left party four.

Accordingly, the coalition will flag the pending dues of the state worth Rs 1.36 lakh crore to corner the BJP-led NDA at the Centre. “Kharge will address two rallies on November 5. Rahul Gandhi will visit the state on November 8 and 9 and address several rallies,” AICC in-charge of Jharkhand Ghulam Ahmed Mir told ETV Bharat.

“The coalition is doing well and will return to power. The people have seen that the state government has kept its promises,” he said. Over the past few days there had been reports of a rift between the coalition partners, but subsided when former Congress state unit chief Rajesh Thakur was seen attending rallies addressed by Chief Minister Hemant Soren. Elsewhere, RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav also attended rallies addressed by the CM.

Later, Congress minister Deepika Pandey Singh attended rallies, along with JMM leader Kalpana Soren, wife of the Chief Minister, as they promoted the women’s welfare scheme together.“The leaders of the alliance are busy finalising the common agenda that will be revealed over the coming days,” said Mir.

While the seat-sharing issues had been resolved amicably, the Congress managers did face some difficulty in finalising the candidates and had to deal with the rebels on some seats. Later, AICC general secretary in-charge organisation KC Venugopal personally assured the dissenters on November 1 that their interests will be taken care of.

“There were some issues but they have been resolved. We have held strategy sessions with the senior leaders, who have been assigned duties in each Assembly constituency. We want the coalition to win this time as well,” said Mir.