BENGALURU: With the deadline for the Congress’ digital membership drive ending on March 31, the sluggish pace of enrolment, especially in BJP strongholds like the coastal region, Kodagu and even Shivamogga, has become a matter of grave concern for Congress state chief DK Shivakumar.So much so that Shivakumar had to give the ongoing Assembly session a miss on Tuesday to personally oversee the enrollment drive in Kalaburagi. Launched with the ambitious target of 50 lakh members, the party is no where close to it with the drive failing to pick up steam.
“Kalaburagi district enrolled 74,000 members, including Chittapur Assembly constituency with 26,000. In my constituency of Kanakapura, 76,000 members were registered while in Iqbal Ansari’s Gangavathi, it was 60,000. When a small state like Telangana could register 40 lakh members, we could do not more than 30 lakh. I had expected 4 lakh enrollments from Kalaburagi district. What went wrong?” he wondered.
According to Congress sources, the real figure stands close to 20 lakh enrolment for the entire state. Udupi stood at the bottom of the pile, registering just 5,193 members from five Assembly segments. Dakshina Kannada with 15,327 enrolments from eight Assembly seats and Shivamogga with 15,221 from seven seats also exposed the disinterest among both party functionaries and people to identify with the grand old party. The situation was similar in Kodagu with just 5,957 people registering for membership to the party digitally.
In contrast, Mysuru (74,000), Mandya (68,000) Chikkamagaluru (49,500) and Hassan (45,913) witnessed moderate response. The rest of the districts registered 13-14 lakh enrolments. “I agree that the response is poor in the coastal region and also in parts of Shivamogga and Kodagu. But the party leaders concerned should motivate those assigned with the job of enrolment as once the people register it is a permanent data for the future course of action,” said a senior leader.