Chintan Baithak over, now Cong mulls poll plank

Though the party’s new slogan ‘Congress ka haath, garib ke saath’ sounds promising, it is yet to be backed with a vision for its implementation. Senior party leaders, who have been keenly following the developments in the rival BJP camp’s brain-storming session held in Maharashtra, was dismayed by the issues highlighted there.

Congress leaders find that besides repeating the same issues, with a more specific focus, they are left with not much choice. If that is done, the party feels that there won’t be any clear differentiation between the two parties. The party is now looking into ways of repackaging matters relating to development, secularism, governance, internal and external security so that at least a qualitative difference can be felt by the voter. This repackaging is expected to be done by a committee, set up by party president Sonia Gandhi which will finalise the party position at Shimla.

The committee has held meetings in this regard but it is yet to arrive at a draft political resolution, expected to be finalised by the end of the week.

On development and good governance, the Congress feels that merely criticising the BJP rule at Centre may not entirely sound innovative. The party would rely heavily on revisiting the scams of the BJP-led NDA government and how development issues were sidelined. The party is also aware that the BJP would be levelling the same charges against the Congress-ruled states.

On security, the party is expected to pin the BJP on continuing tension at the border. Congress, though supporting Indo-Pak talks, has warned the Government to ‘‘be cautious’’ in dealing with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.