Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked Congress ministers to play an active role in organisation building and devote time for ordinary workers. Regretting that many ministers were not doing this at present, she said ministers on tour must visit the ‘‘local offices of the party, meet with party workers and stay in touch with them’’. ‘‘This will raise the morale of workers,’’ she said.Sonia was addressing a meeting of party functionaries from regions covered under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREG). CMs, state presidents and chiefs of 200 districts under the NREG attended the meeting to come up with schemes for the political revival of the Congress.Most of the these districts are in states ruled by non-Congress parties. The party is worried over the non-Congress state governments packaging the central scheme as their own, but is helpless since the Act provides for considerable autonomy for state governments. Many speakers at the meeting demanded that the central government take measures to stop state governments from taking credit for the scheme.Speaking at the function, both Sonia and PM Manmohan Singh termed the NREG scheme ‘‘historic’’. Singh said he would pick the NREG as the ‘‘biggest achievement’’ of the UPA government. Processing applications for job cards, selection of works by gram sabha, maintenance and transparency of muster rolls, execution and measurement of works, payment of wages through banks and post offices, social audit etc were identified as areas in which the party could help the project, growing itself in the process.Many delegates also complained that the non-Congress state governments were not taking adequate interest in the scheme. ‘‘You must tell the people that it is a central government programme and Congress is the only party that had promised this scheme in the 2004 election manifesto. Other parties who are trying to take credit must also realise this fact,’’ said Ramesh.
