NEW DELHI, NOV 17: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi today virtually put her party Chief Ministers on notice, instructing them to pull up their socks to bring back the party's traditional vote-bank of dalits, tribals and minorities.The clear directive also significantly means that the party has decided to revert back to its ``pro-poor'' agenda to ride it back to power by seeking to recapture its hold on the weaker sections of society, which over the years has been poached upon by rival parties. Apart from these groups, women have also been identified as a key target group by the party.Sonia made clear her intentions at the end of an eight-hour-long brainstorming session at the AICC headquarters here with the CMs of all the party-ruled states except Nagaland. In attendance were CMs of seven states: MP's Digvijay Singh, Rajasthan's Ashok Gehlot, Karnataka's S.M. Krishna, Maharasthra's Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chhattisgarh's Ajit Jogi, Pondicherry's P Shanmugham and Delhi's Sheila Dikshit. Nagaland's S.C. Jamir couldn't attend the session.It was Sonia's first big event in the party after getting elected its chief on Wednesday and, although planned in advance, its timing was significant. The party chief took the opportunity to send home the message to her CMs that she was firmly in command and that non-performance on their part would no longer be tolerated.The mega-meeting, the first of its kind under the stewardship of Sonia, comes in the wake of increasing complaints from several party-ruled states - in particular Maharasthra, Delhi and Rajasthan - of poor implementation of the party manifesto, especially with tribals, dalits and minorities.The CMs came armed with reports and elaborate statistics on the ``successful'' implementation of pro-poor programmes in their states and vied with each other for the party chief's attention. But at the end of the day, Sonia's report card on their performance so far wasn't as satisfactory as they would have wished. ``Change your mindset and get down to doing it rather than rattle out mere statistics,'' was her pointed observation. Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Delhi were found to be particularly wanting in manifesto implementation.While Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijay Singh is reported to have come in for some praise for his innovative schemes of poverty alleviation, especially the ``Grain Bank'' scheme as an alternative to the Public Distribution System (PDS), Deshmukh held the party's coalition with the NCP as an inhibiting factor in the implementation of some of the schemes. He is said to have pointed out that most corporations/boards in the state, including those dealing with tribal and dalit welfare schemes, had NCP men as their chiefs.The fact that the CMs are on Sonia's watchlist is apparent from the fact that she has herself decided to undertake fact-finding visits to their states soon. She will spend two days in each state and interact directly with the party workers instead of officials to know about the progress. A coordination committee for each party-ruled state comprising a senior central leader, the AICC general secretary in-charge and the CM has been give the responsibility for monitoring the CMs' performance on these counts regularly.The idea behind pulling up the CMs, said party sources, was to make the party-ruled states a ``model'' as far as improving the lot of dalits, tribals and minorities was concerned. The party's track record would then be used to win back its vote-bank in the states where it is out of power.Among the specific issues discussed at the meeting were increasing the resource allocation for various poverty alleviation schemes for dalits, tribals and minorities, empowerement of women, filling the backlog in job reservations, preventing atrocities on weaker sections, reservation for minorities and removing overlapping in various schemes.
