Eye on 2019, Congress’ manifesto panel holds maiden meeting

Sources said the panel would soon set up sub-groups and the members would travel across the country for holding public consultations. “We will seek suggestions from all — from farmers to industry to youth and students to women, Dalit groups and tribals,” a leader who attended the meeting said.

“It was a preliminary meeting but the broad idea will be to go to the people. We have held some good consultations in Gujarat and Karnataka and also in the Northeast and lots of inputs were taken. People could see that the Congress was listening,” another leader said. Sources said the committee would also deliberate on ideas like drawing up specific mini-manifestos for certain target groups. Ideas like a separate document for youth and women are also being talked about, the sources said. Already, the party’s Scheduled Caste department is thinking about preparing separate documents for reserved constituencies in poll-bound Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

Rahul recently announced a 19-member manifesto committee and a 13-member publicity committee. The publicity committee will have its first meeting later this week.