BHOPAL: In another attempt to embrace ‘soft Hindutva’ and counter the ruling BJP over a ‘pro-Hindutva’ pitch, Congress has now announced the distribution of bottles of holy Ganga water across the state as a mark to assure voters fulfilment of guarantees promised by state head and chief minister face Kamal Nath if elected to power in the upcoming Assembly polls.
Himanshu Yadav, the state Congress’ OBC cell head of Indore Lok Sabha constituency, said Ganga water bottles will be sourced from Haridwar and distributed in the coming days. The campaign will start in the Indore district.
Importantly, ahead of by-elections to 27 assembly segments in 2020, the Congress had embarked on a similar campaign. Titled ‘Shuddh Ke Liye Yuddh’ (War for Purity) the campaign was launched by the MP Congress Committee chief and ex-CM Kamal Nath, three months before the bulk assembly bypolls.
The campaign saw door-to-door distribution of half-litre bottles among voters in the 27 assembly segments, where byelections were to be held. Twenty-five of these seats had fallen vacant due to the resignation of Congress MLAs, including the 22 legislators whose resignations had led to the fall of the 15-month-old Congress government led by Kamal Nath in March 2020. The campaign was aimed at “purifying constituencies of the opportunist political nexus of the BJP and the former Congress MLAs (now in BJP)”, which led to the fall of the Nath government.
Before it, during the 2018 assembly polls campaign, Digvijaya Singh-loyalist Congress candidate from Bhopal Dakshin-Paschim seat, PC Sharma had distributed Ganga Jal bottles in the constituency of the state capital Bhopal.