Cong must give up big brother stance: Pawar

Pawar was candid enough to admit that the “big brotherly” attitude of the Congress leadership obstructed the party’s alliance with some political parties before the general elections. “In the changed political situation, the Congress must have tie-up with other parties but no alliance should be at the cost of the party’s prestige and credibility and tantamount to losing its policies and programme,” he said.Besides advocating pre-and post-poll alliance for the the party, Pawar laid more emphasis on building the organisational network of the party. He gave a call to party delegates to march to the villages and remote areas to rejuvenate their ties with the people at the grass-root instead of taking rounds in Delhi, Mumbai and other cities. Pawar said the party leadership had to analyse how the Congress, which was a strong force in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Punjab till the other day, had faced massive erosion in its support base. “We have to rebuild our base in these states and recapture our glorious past,” he told the delegates. For this, he said, the party leaders had to take issues to the grass-roots and distinguish between the real party worker and those taking rounds of the party headquarters at Delhi. Pawar accused the BJP of having had a “hidden agenda” for promoting Hindutva and quoted the BJP manifesto to illustrate that the latter was committed to rewriting Indian history for implementingthe RSS ideology and undermining the Independence movement by highlighting the “positive role” of people like Nathu Ram Godse.