NEW DELHI: The Congress on Friday said that the state leadership in Assam would hit the ground running for the upcoming elections from January 21, with holding grassroot level meetings of party workers across the states.
After a key strategy meeting with the party president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior party leaders including Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi, Congress senior observer Bhupesh Baghel said that it had stepped up preparations for the state polls, with the party finalising its campaign roadmap after consultations with the central leadership.
“As part of the plan, the party will hold its first press conference in Guwahati on January 20, after which a series of organisational meetings will be conducted across the state from January 21 to 28,” he said.
Besides Congress senior observers Baghel, DK Shivakumar and Bandhu Tirkey, Congress general secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal, Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi and the party's AICC general secretary in-charge Jitendra Singh and other state leaders were also present in the meeting, which was held at Rajaji Marg residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi.
Baghel, the former chief minister of Chhattisgarh, also said that the party had taken a decisive call to take on what it termed the “most corrupt government and most corrupt chief minister Himanta Biswas Sarma” in Assam.
“The biggest thing is that the government is the most corrupt and they have mortgaged the whole of Assam. We all have to fight this battle,” he added.
After the meeting with top leadership, the observers hold a separate discussion on the poll preparations with the state leadership.
Shivakumar said that the leaders briefed the top leadership about the ground situation in the state and the party is united to wrest Assam from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “We will all work together, It is certain. We are getting information from the ground that there will be a change in Assam… There will be no polarization. A clear message will be delivered. The entire party is united,” he said.
The Congress leaders also said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was recently the chairperson of the Assam Congress screening committee, would certainly benefit the party as she had a great rapport with workers in the state.
The Congress is seeking to wrest power from the BJP in Assam, where it has been out of power for the last two consecutive terms. The elections to the 126-member Assam Assembly are slated in a few months' time along with other states — Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and West Bengal. Debabrata Saikia, who is the Congress Legislature Party leader in the state assembly in Assam, also attended the meeting.
The top brass of the party is expected to meet senior party leaders from West Bengal on Saturday to discuss poll preparedness and strategy for the state assembly elections. The party’s general secretary in-charge organisation KC Venugopal, general secretary in-charge West Bengal Ghulam Ahmad Mir and West Bengal Congress Committee chief Subhankar Sarkar and others are likely to attend the meeting with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Sources said that the party would deliberate upon possibilities of forging alliance in the upcoming the polls, which are just a few months away. Elections in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry would be held in the next few months as the tenures of their respective assemblies are due to end in May and June.
Subsequently, a meeting of the party’s screening committee for West Bengal will also take place in Kolkata on January 18, sources added.
Other meetings involving state political action committee members and election committee members as well as senior party observers for the state will also be held on January 18 in Kolkata.
Sudip Roy Burman, Shakeel Ahmad Khan and Prakash Joshi have been appointed as senior observers for the West Bengal Assembly election by the Congress.
In the 2021 elections in West Bengal, TMC won 213 seats in the 294-member House. For the first time in the history of the state, Congress contested 91 seats but couldn’t open its account. Its vote share was three percent.