New Delhi:Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and sitting chief Mallikarjun Kharge are expected to urge the Uttarakhand leaders to be united and win all the five Lok Sabha seats in the hill state in 2024 when they will review the party’s strategy on July 13 amid a strong buzz of the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code in the state.
“Kharge has called a meeting of Uttarakhand leaders on July 13 to discuss preparation for the Lok Sabha polls next year,” AICC secretary in charge of Uttarakhand Rajesh Dharmani told ETV Bharat. According to Dharmani, the target for the Congress is to wrest all five Lok Sabha seats in the state from the BJP and counter the saffron party’s divisive agenda.
“The BJP is using the UCC issue to polarize the voters. They run false campaigns to divide the people. They are planning to pass a UCC resolution in the state but it is a central issue and needs parliamentary approval. They misguide ordinary people who don’t understand complex legislation processes. We have to see how we can fight that divisive agenda unitedly,” said Dharmani.
The AICC secretary said that the state unit needed to be united to achieve the parliamentary poll objective and also needed to fill in the organizational gaps. “There is a proposal that senior leaders may be given charge of one Lok Sabha seat each. Besides, we also need to ensure that there is proper coordination among the senior leaders. The state unit also needs to give important party roles to our workers in order to energize them,” said Dharmani.
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Last year, differences among the state unit had surfaced after the party lost the assembly polls to the BJP. Later, in an internal analysis, infighting had been identified as one of the key reasons behind the poll loss. Rahul had then deployed a new team to control dissent in the Uttarakhand unit. Karan Mahara became the state unit chief, Yashpal Arya CLP leader and Bhuwan Kapri deputy CLP leader to balance caste equations in the state.
Since then, the state unit has been staging protests to take on the ruling BJP. Over the past few days, the state leaders led by former chief minister Harish Rawat have been demanding a CBI probe in the Ankita Bhandari murder case in which the son of a BJP leader is involved.
“The rains created havoc in Haridwar. The farmers have suffered, the electricity supply is down and the threat of diseases looms large but the government is doing nothing. Our government had built a dam on the river Ganga but it has suffered damages which are not being addressed,” said Rawat.
According to the former chief minister, price rise is another major issue affecting the people in the hill state but there has been little relief from the state government. AICC secretary Dharmani said while the Congress will tone up the state unit, the party will also run a campaign to highlight the BJP’s failures.
“They made a lot of promises in 2019. But there are no jobs for our youth and no development has been done in the hill state,” he said. The Congress will also flag the concerns related to ecological disasters in the state due to unplanned development, particularly the sinking Joshimath area and threat to the various dams and power plants, he added.
