AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who who is heading the Congress Election Coordination Committee, has intensified the exercise of formulating strategies for the 2014 general election to enable his party score a hat trick.
Rahul is showing more focus on rival parties’s strengths and weaknesses than the Congress’ in various Lok Sabha constituencies in the country. On his directive, his “secret agents” have spanned out to various parts of the country on study mission and are now preparing a detailed report to help the party leadership select probable candidates for the general election.
The 50-member team, appointed by Rahul Gandhi to asses the performance of party MPs, has submitted a preliminary report to AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, who is in charge of this exercise. The agents have prepared performance reports on each Congress MP and also a list of probables. But Mistry asked them to prepare a detailed report on rival parties’ position in each constituency in every state as wanted by Rahul. He also asked them to suggest ways to strengthen the Congress in constituencies where other parties are strong.
According to Bhanu Prasad, an MLC and one of the six secret agents from Andhra Pradesh, the detailed reports on each constituency is to be submitted in ten days’ time.
“During our visits to various constituencies, apart from reviewing each MP’s accomplishments, we also gathered information on other ticket aspirants and prepared a list of three probables in the order of priority in each constituency,” Prasad told Express.
In regard to the Lok Sabha constituencies represented by the opposition parties, they prepared a list of probable candidates with winning chances as the criterion. After going through the reports, Rahul Gandhi will interact with his “secret agents” and formulate a strategy on how to prepare the Congress in each state for the elections which are about a year away. He is likely to hold the meeting in the last week of January.
Rahul’s secret mission is believed to have created a rift between DCC presidents and Rahul’s inspectors during the latter’s visits.
As Rahul’s men are not aware of the contours of the constituencies allotted to them, they depended on the local leaders while gathering information, which made the whole exercise defective. As a result, Rahul wants to get some more feedback on the performance of the party’s MPs possibly through other means.