New Delhi, Jan 04 (PTI) The Congress top brass on Thursday expressed displeasure at the pace of the party’s crowdfunding campaign and told the leaders to speed up efforts and get generous contributions for the party ahead of Lok Sabha elections, sources said.
During the over three-hour discussions at a meeting of general secretaries, in-charges and state unit chiefs and CLP leaders from all states, the leaders were also asked to focus with full strength on around 255 seats which are winnable, the sources said.
The party is likely to declare its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections “very soon” and has told the states to start the process immediately. The party will also form the screening committees for each states as part of this exercise this week.
Sources said top Congress leadership including party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, besides also Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, told the leaders that the generation of Rs 11 crore in two weeks was not encouraging and asked them to intensify their efforts to collect more funds from the party leaders, workers and public.
The sources added that AICC treasurer Ajay Maken was told to speed up efforts and visit the states to step up the campaign and hold talks with state units to generate more funds for the party.
They added that the party leadership decided to separately generate funds for the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which is beginning January 14.
The party had launched the crowdfunding campaign “Donate for Desh” in December to generate funds for the party for the Lok Sabha elections.
The sources said Kharge told the meeting that the gains made through Bharat Jodo Yatra should be consolidated further through the second yatra from Manipur to Mumbai and rechristened it as Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
This happened after Rahul Gandhi sought the opinion of party leaders at the meeting on whether they wanted the “Bharat Jodo” as part of this yatra which was earlier named as “Bharat Nyay Yatra”, the sources said.
While Kharge told the leaders not to speak out of turn on sensitive issues and not discuss internal matters in public through the media, Rahul Gandhi asked them to refrain from making unnecessary comments which would force the party to take stern action.
The Congress is also in the process of finalising coordinators for all Lok Sabha constituencies and has asked state units to give names of possible candidates.
The leaders were asked to focus on booth management at the micro level during elections to ensure victory of party candidates.
Rahul Gandhi, the sources said, also asked party leaders at the meeting to build the narrative that the INDIA bloc can win this Lok Sabha election in order to build public opinion in favour of the opposition alliance.
The Congress is contesting this election as INDIA bloc and would begin seat-sharing talks in the next week with other like-minded parties, after the seat sharing committee of the party held talks and gave their feedback to party chief after holding talks with state leaders.
