Haryana polls: Congress to release manifesto today

Congress party will release its manifesto for Haryana Vidhan Sabha polls on Friday. The party will focus on addressing the issued being faced by the state's farmers, poor, women and youngsters.

Chandigarh:Haryana's main opposition Congress will release its poll manifesto here on Friday and it will focus on addressing the issued being faced by the state's farmers, poor, women and youngsters, a party leader said.

"The Congress will release its manifesto for Haryana Vidhan Sabha polls on Friday. Our focus will be on farmers, poor, youth, women, scheduled castes, backward classes, BPL families and other sections," party's senior leader from Haryana and convener of the Manifesto Committee, Aftab Ahmed informed over the phone on Thursday.

"We will come out with schemes for all them and other sections of the society as well," he added.

Ahmed said before preparing the manifesto, the party took feedback and views from a cross-section of people from the society.

"We have tried to include everybody's aspirations and this will reflect in our manifesto. We will also come out with women-centric schemes," he said.

"As a matter of fact, our party's national president (Sonia Gandhi), state unit president (Kumari Selja) and chairperson of manifesto committee (Kiran Choudhary) are women," he said.

"Our faujis (army personnel) and our sportspersons are our pride and manifesto will cover these sections... There is something for the media persons too," he said.

Haryana Congress chief Kumari Selja had recently said that the Congress will announce a loan waiver for the poor and farmers in the state if voted to power.

The state Congress chief had said the loan waiver promise would be part of the manifesto for the October 21 Haryana assembly polls.

Congress is eyeing to wrest power from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which has set a target of winning more than 75 seats in the 90-member Assembly.

Former Haryana Chief Minister and party's state Congress Legislature Party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda had recently said the BJP made tall promises to the people before coming to power but failed to fulfil these.

"Whereas, whatever the Congress promised in its manifesto in 2005, 2009, we fulfilled that," he said.

Meanwhile, speaking at Badshahpur in Gurugram on Thursday during poll campaigning for her party candidates, Selja said that in the party's election manifesto priority will be given to foster brotherhood among various communities "because the present BJP government did nothing except dividing people".

"In our manifesto, we have taken care of aspirations of all sections," she said.

Hitting out at the BJP, she said they have failed to fulfil promises made to the people.

Besides, Selja, Hooda, Aftab Ahmed, Kiran Choudhary, Congress' General Secretary-in charge of Haryana, Ghulam Nabi Azad will also be present at the manifesto release event here.

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