The Karnataka Congress has decided to hold conventions of various communities, including minorities, other backward classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in all districts of the State to mobilise people towards the party ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections.
The party held a district-level convention of Madivala community and minorities last Sunday in Tumakuru and it was attended by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D.K. Shivakumar and senior leaders of the district. The party would hold an SC/ST convention in Ballari next month, said sources in the party. Various cells of the party have been given the task of making arrangements for holding district-level conventions.
To gauge leaders
The district-level conventions would help the party in identifying leaders’ mass support and organising skills ahead of the elections. They would help the party in identifying candidates in advance based on local issues. They would also provide a platform for leaders to join the Congress, a leader said.
The party is also planning to hold ‘Na Nayaki’ (I am leader) conventions targeting women, who form nearly 50% of voters. The aim of these conventions was to assess the party’s strength in different regions of the State, sources said.
All these events, sources said, would enable senior leaders to prepare a blueprint for the Assembly elections and help candidates identify gaps in mobilisation of people in local settings.
Other than these events, the party’s local leaders have been told to constitute booth-level committees before the end of this month. Party workers would be trained in monitoring booths under ‘Namma boothu, namma mathadaana’ prorgramme.
Chintan Shivir
Meanwhile, the KPCC has also decided to hold a State-level Chintan Shivir in Bengaluru on June 1 and 2, on the lines of the national-level shivir conducted in Udaipur, Rajasthan, a few days ago.
Mr. Shivakumar has set up a 33-member State-level Nav Sankalp Shivir Committee headed by senior party leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council B.K. Hariprasad to coordinate activities for the conduct of State-level Chintan Shivir in Bengaluru. It has also been assigned the responsibility of taking the Udaipur Nav Sankalp Declaration of the party to the districts.
The committee has been given the job of preparing programmes to be conducted in Bengaluru on the culmination of 75th years of the country’s independence, preparation of a plan of action for filling vacancies at panchayat, block, district, and State levels in the next 90 to 180 days, and constitution of a political affairs committee for deliberating on important political issues and drive a common political line of the party, said a KPCC communication.
Seven-time MLA and former Minister Ramalinga Reddy, who is also KPCC working president, has been appointed as convener of the committee.
