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With a focus on the states where elections are due later this year and next year, the Congress has started preparing for the big battle ahead and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has given a task to its leaders to take on the opponents with full force and strengthen the organization first.
In the last few weeks, Rahul Gandhi, along with party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, held marathon meetings with the leadership of Haryana, Punjab, Kerala, Assam and West Bengal.
In the last meeting on Wednesday for West Bengal, Rahul Gandhi asked the party leaders to focus on strengthening the party at block and district levels so that the results favor the grand old party in the coming days.
In his meeting with the West Bengal state incharge Ghulam Ahmed Mir, state unit chief Subhankar Sarkar, and several other senior leaders like Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Deepa Das Minshi and others were also present. The Lok Sabha MP from Rae Bareli stressed strengthening the party and asked the leadership to hold protests and several other programs on the issues related to people so that it can make inroads in the bastion of Mamata Banerjee.
It is interesting that West Bengal is ruled by Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress and is also one of the members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc at the national level. However, in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, it contested the elections in the state all alone.
Party sources said that in a meeting with the state leaders, Rahul Gandhi clearly asked the state leaders to hit the streets on the issues directly related to the public.
He asked the leaders to protest and give the ruling party a clear message that the results will similar to those of Delhi, where the ruling AAP was ousted from power with Congress cutting the votes of its opponents.
The source pointed out that the Gandho scion also stressed that even if the ruling party gets annoyed with it due to its protests on issues, it will be discussed.
The source further said that Rahul Gandhi also stressed increasing the vote share in the state by focusing on SC, ST, Tribals and Dalit communities and bringing them to its side like it did successfully during the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.
He also asked the party leaders to strengthen the organization instead of thinking about an alliance in the state and instead of developing the party’s leadership pool.
In West Bengal, the Congress had, in the last Assembly polls, joined hands with the left parties, which did not yield much-favored results for the grand old party. The Congress scored a nil after contesting on 91 out of 294 seats in the state and the voter percentage went to a record low of 2.93 per cent.
The source said that Rahul Gandhi, during the meeting, also made it clear that if the party manages to increase its vote share by 8 to 10 percent, then it can hold the key to government formation in the eastern state.
The Congress has been out of power in West Bengal on its own. The party had won 46 seats in the 2011 assembly polls and 44 in the 2016 assembly seats.
