New Delhi: Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is looking at the 52 tough assembly seats to boost the party’s tally in the coming Rajasthan poll battle. According to party insiders, the former party president has tasked All India Congress Committee (AICC) Rajasthan Screening Committee head, Gourav Gogoi, to work out a plan to turn around at least half of the 52 Assembly seats the grand old party has been losing for a long.
Gogoi, who reviewed all the 200 Assembly seats in Rajasthan from August 28 to 31, will now study the reasons for the Congress’ debacle on the 52 difficult seats, take feedback from local workers, identify potential candidates and suggest a plan to win most of them.
AICC secretaries in charge of the state, Nizamuddin Qazi, Virendra Rathore and Amrita Dhawan will tour the tough seats to get the ground report. “We are focusing on the difficult seats in the state and will give a tough fight to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) there. We hope to do well in those seats though we have not been winning there for long. These 52 seats will be directly monitored by the AICC," AICC secretary in charge of Rajasthan, Virender Rathore, told ETV Bharat.
"Out of the 70 seats that fall in the Marwar-Mevar area under my charge, there are around 40 difficult seats. We are putting a lot of energy there. If we can turn around even half of them, it will be a big boost to the Congress tally. As it is, we are in a good position in the state but a comfortable margin certainly adds to stability. We hope to increase our tally this time,” Rathore said.
“As per my feedback, the voters are supporting the Congress largely due to the state government’s schemes, including the first of its kind health cover and also that the state team is united,” he added.
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The Congress is planning to release the first list of candidates mostly on the tough seats in September. The seats include Sriganganagar, Gangapur City, Anupgarh, Bhadra, Bikaner East, Pilibanga, Sanganer, Malviya Nagar, Kapasan, Vidyadhar Nagar, Jalor, Dug, Jhalrapatan, Khanpur, Manohar Thana, Udaipurvati, Ramganj Mandi, Marwar Junction, Malpura, Revdar, Nagaur, Ratangarh, Khandela, Ajmer North, Ajmer South, Bharatpur, Alwar City, Behrod, Bhilwara, Bundi, Kota, Sirohi, Bhopalgarh, etc.
The plan would also focus on forging pacts with the other parties and winning over the BJP leaders in these seats, if possible. As part of the special focus on Rajasthan, AICC in charge of the organization, KC Venugopal, reached Jaipur on Sunday and held a core group meeting attended by AICC in charge of state, SS Randhawa, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, state unit chief Govind Singh Dotasara, Speaker CP Joshi, campaign committee chief Govind Ram Meghwal, Mohan Prakash and Sachin Pilot.
On Monday, the campaign committee headed by Govind Ram Meghwal, who has come from the BJP, held its first meeting to discuss the party’s campaign for the polls likely to be held in November. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and screening committee chief, Gourav Gogoi, also attended the meeting. The party is expected to focus on the social welfare guarantees and the work done during the past five years.
