As Kharge gears up for 2024 battle, Congress to get dedicated panel to manage polls

“Though we don’t have the kind of resources the BJP has, a dedicated group of leaders just focused on the coming polls would be of great help. This group should not be bothered with distributing tickets but should oversee all the other aspects of election fighting,” said a Steering Committee member while speaking to ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi:Ahead of the 2024 national polls and a slew of assembly elections in 2023, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is trying to counter an aggressive BJP’s election fighting machinery by setting up a dedicated committee for the purpose. According to party insiders, the proposed poll management committee will be set up at the AICC level as part of the organizational revamp that Kharge has been planning since the Plenary Session at Chhattisgarh’s Raipur from Feb 24-26.

The party brought several key amendments to its constitution to pave way for the far-reaching changes that the grand old party wants to make in its organization to make it ready for the state polls this year and the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. “It is a welcome idea. Such a panel would be very helpful,” AICC general secretary in charge of Jharkhand Avinash Pande told this channel.

“Certainly, such a panel would help the party if the Congress president decides so,” the AICC general secretary in charge of Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya Manish Chatrath told ETV Bharat. “It is a welcome step,” AICC general secretary in charge of Telangana Manikrao Thakare told ETV Bharat. According to party insiders, at present, the responsibility of poll management is vested with the respective AICC in charge.

However, given the fact that the grand old party faces an aggressive BJP in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan this year along with the BRS in Telangana, a dedicated poll management committee would be needed to match the saffron party’s juggernaut. These state polls are being billed as a semi-final ahead of the 2024 national elections when Congress hopes to take on the BJP and is trying to revamp the organization for the challenge.

“Though we don’t have the kind of resources the BJP has, a dedicated group of leaders just focused on the coming polls would be of great help. This group should not be bothered with distributing tickets but should oversee all the other aspects of election fighting,” said a Steering Committee member.

According to Thakare, “The nature of polls has changed completely over the past years. Earlier, the local teams would get active only after the announcement of poll dates, and most work was done by the candidates in their constituencies. Now, there has to be round-the-clock monitoring of the ground situation much before the polls.”

“Earlier, the social media campaigns were localized. But now they have to be centrally monitored and dovetailed into the campaign strategy,” he said.

During the various internal discussions in the grand old party, the deployment of the top BJP leaders even to an assembly by-poll has been noted and many insiders were of the opinion that the Congress needed to get more aggressive on that front.

A case in point was the recent Tripura assembly polls where the top Congress leadership did not campaign even though the state unit faced violence from political rivals. The focus on the other two north-eastern states Meghalaya and Nagaland too was lacking at the central level, said party insiders.