NEW DELHI: The Congress is making moves to bounce back in the political game. It has begun putting its house in order with a young chief ministerial aspirant, Ajay Maken, and strategies to revive its moribund state unit to win back Delhi.
The party has fallen back on ‘trusted and tested’ local leaders, particularly former state ministers, like Mahabal Mishra, Yoganand Shashtri, Ch. Prem Singh, Kiran Walia, with just a few fresh faces, like Sharmistha Mukherjee, President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter; Pratyush Kant, former journalist; and Jagdish Yadav, former OBC Commission chairman.
“Our aim,’’ the Delhi AICC in charge P C Chacko admits, “is as much to create a splash as to revive the people’s memory of a stable government the Congress had provided them for 15 years.’’ Its strategy, apparently, is based on internal surveys, which showed that in certain constituencies, like in Lakshminagar, “people regret having defeated A K Walia’’ who was “accessible even when he was handling several portfolios’’ in Sheila Dikshit’s government.
However, badly beaten in the Lok Sabha and four consecutive assembly polls, the Congress chose to cover all segments, 10 first timers, six women, six minority candidates and eight from the youth brigade, leaving 35-odd seats to old-timers.
For a change, the Maken-Chacko duo has been given a free hand to run the campaign. The strategy, says a party insider, is to focus on 40 seats, mostly those in Dalit and minority dominated areas, like Ballimaran, Okhla, Mangolpuri. There’s apprehension the Muslim votes may swing towards AAP. Thus, Congress has Raj Babbar, Nagma, Priya Dutta, to campaign for it in target zones. Former CMs, like Bhupindra Singh Hooda, Captain Amarinder Singh, are expected to convince the Sikh-Punjabi voters to stay with the Congress.
On finding the Delhi unit in a shambles, Chacko appointed 140 block level observers, 14 district level observers and one MP each for two districts and to help the candidates in campaigning.