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A Rs 10-crore startup fund for every Lok Sabha constituency to boost young entrepreneurs, a Rs 10,000 per month scholarship for 50 lakh budding sportspersons under the age of 21, a promise to make apprenticeship a legal right and provide monetary compensation for those hit by paper leaks. The Congress on Wednesday is set to announce its first tranche of manifesto promises for the youth.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi are likely to announce these promises at a public meeting in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. The Congress manifesto committee finalised the document at a meeting on Tuesday. The document, drafted by panel chairman and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and All India Professionals’ Congress chairman Praveen Chakravarty with inputs from all members, will now be placed before the Congress Working Committee (CWC) for its approval.
While the BJP-led Union government has a Startup India Seed Fund Scheme providing financial assistance to Incubators and Startups for Proof of Concept, Prototype Development, Product Trials, Market Entry and Commercialization, the Congress believes its promise would be different given that it will be available for youth under 40 in every Lok Sabha constituency — urban or rural. The fund will be disbursed over five years.
“Now degrees will get respect, problems will be solved and everyone will get work…there will be a big announcement tomorrow,” Rahul said in a post on X. The sports scholarship, sources said, will be for budding talent across all disciplines.
While the party has yet to work out the nitty gritty of the monetary compensation that it plans to promise for those who are affected by paper leaks, the party hopes the promise will strike a chord with the youth given the repeated instances of paper leaks across almost all states. “There is a need to ensure accountability at all levels by ending the criminal nexus of a negligent government, corrupt officials, ‘cheating mafia’ and private printing presses,” Rahul said Tuesday.
Arguing that there had been over 70 paper leak cases in the last seven years that have shattered the dreams of more than two crore students, he said the Congress would come out with a concrete and foolproof plan to make the government recruitment process transparent.
The Indian Express Monday reported that the Congress think tank is looking at the much-praised apprenticeship model of Germany as also a proposal which involves payment of monetary compensation to candidates affected by paper leaks and cancellation of competitive examinations for inclusion in the manifesto.
