BHUBANESWAR: Congress and other like-minded parties on Sunday decided to organise ‘Jan Akrosh’ rallies across the state from the first week of November against the state government and the Centre ahead of elections early next year.
The decision was taken at the third round meeting of 16 non-BJD and non-BJP political parties of the state headed by Congress. Issues on which to launch a campaign against the BJD and BJP were discussed at the meeting. Besides, a 17-member coordination committee headed by the president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) Sarat Pattanayak was constituted to oversee the campaign till the elections are over.
Sources maintained that the issue of seat sharing did not crop up at the meeting. It was decided that a joint campaign will have to be launched first. Seat sharing can wait till the elections are announced. Besides, out of the 16 political parties in the group, Congress may have seat-sharing talks with only left parties. Other political parties in the group do not have any relevance in this regard.
The first Jan Akrosh rally will be held in the first week of November at Rayagada where the Congress has a sound base followed by the second one at Rourkela in second week of November. The third and fourth rallies will be held at Sambalpur and Balasore in the first and second weeks of November, the OPCC president said.
Pattanayak said the campaign will be launched over issues of a caste-based census, deteriorating law and order situation, growing unemployment, neglect of SC and ST communities and large-scale corruption in the state. National leaders of the Congress and other political parties are likely to attend the rallies, he added.