Kharge to chair Congress 2024 poll manifesto panel meet Jan 4; to focus on jobs, social welfare

The Congress will have its manifesto and a separate Common Minimum Programme will be worked out, along with the INDIA alliance partners, writes Amit Agnihotri

New Delhi:Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge will chair the first meeting of the party’s 2024 Lok Sabha Poll Manifesto Committee on January 4, which is expected to focus majorly on the grand old party’s social welfare and economic agenda. “The first meeting of the panel will take place on January 4. The broad focus of the party will be on social welfare, boosting the economy and security. Social welfare is a broad ambit and includes issues like jobs, social harmony, price rise and women’s security. The party document will also focus on internal security, Chinese border incursions among other issues,” convenor of Congress Manifesto Committee TS Singh Deo told ETV Bharat.

According to the Congress veteran, the party manifesto will have a special mention of two issues, caste census and 33 per cent reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies that are close to the hearts of former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi respectively. “The caste census is not a political tool for us. It is meant to provide an objective social distribution of society and will be used for the judicious distribution of national resources. As far as the women’s reservation issue is concerned, the Modi government has cheated the women voters of the country by enacting a law, which will not be implemented before 2029. The Women’s Reservation Act should have been applicable to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls,” said Singh Deo.

The Congress manifesto panel is headed by former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and includes Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as a member. Accordingly, the document will strongly focus on strengthening the economy and empowering women. “Economy is the basis of all good governance and social welfare policies. We will look at the past manifestos to draft a new one factoring the ground-level situations. The party manifesto will focus not only on 2024 but beyond,” said Singh Deo.

According to party insiders, while Congress will have its manifesto and take the document to the people, a separate common minimum programme will be worked out, along with the INDIA alliance partners. “Earlier, we went to the polls with our manifesto while the allies had their promises. The alliance is not a political party, but only a pre-poll alliance, which will have seat sharing,” said Singh Deo.

Though the Congress had conducted an elaborate exercise to seek people’s views for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll manifesto, this time the party have to operate on a tight schedule.“Yes, the time is less for an elaborate exercise to seek public opinion as we would have to cover a large number of states, but some sort of a mechanism for public consultations would be evolved. Maybe we can seek public views online on what they expect from the party manifesto or divide the country into separate geographical zones where public consultations could be held at a central place. Nothing is final yet. When we meet, all the administrative issues will be sorted out,” said Singh Deo.