Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Oct 9: The political parties are busy digesting the surprise announcement of election to three vacant Lok Sabha (LS) seats by the election committee and are in a tearing hurry to get the mechanism moving to bag maximum seats. In the midst of this melee, Congress has set up a strategy committee led by its MLC, V S Ugrappa.

In addition, in-charges have been named for every division for collecting information of the respective divisions. These divisions will pool together information to enable the party to adopt plans and strategies which suit the respective divisions for ensuring success in the LS election.

V S Ugrappa

Mysuru division will be led by former MLA, Vasu, and MLC, Ivan D'Souza. Prakash Rathod will head Belagavi division while H M Revanna will head the city division. K C Kondaiah will be in charge of Kalaburagi, with Vijay Mattikatti having been appointed the coordinator.

The committee will put together strengths and weaknesses of the party in every ward as far as assembly election conducted this year is concerned. It also has to collect ward-wise changes that have happened during the urban local bodies election held recently. The team also has been given the responsibility of drawing up plans to see that votes are diverted towards the Congress party at the ward level in the forthcoming election.

The party wants to pool information about the opinion the voters have about the Congress after the coalition government came to power. Information about the attitude of voters towards Congress in the urban local bodies and the assembly election has to be put together through the block Congress presidents and district Congress presidents. The committee has to own the responsibility of attracting maximum votes from urban dwellers in the coming Lok Sabha election.

There is information that there has been objections from the party members for the said committee, which has been constituted by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president, Dinesh Gundu Rao. As per information gathered, some senior members have given the opinion that drawing up action plans on the basis of party's popularity among the voters in the local bodies election will not be useful to boost party's performance in Lok Sabha and draw up plans, as there is huge difference between Lok Sabha and local bodies elections.

Some sources say that this responsibility has been entrusted with the specific aim of accommodating leaders who have been demanding ministerial berths even for legislative council members and to keep them busy. Some feel that those who have been chosen for this committee will remain silent even when ministry expansion takes place after the bypoll, as they will have to work till the Lok Sabha election. To that extent, cabinet expansion will be a smooth affair, the leadership seems to be thinking.

President-designate of the strategy committee, V S Ugrappa, said that the party president has given this responsibility by reposing trust on the capabilities of leaders concerned. He said that the party president has given this position of responsibility to enable them to remain active in the party and discharge their duties sincerely even though they are deprived of power. He opined that this committee was not formed with the intention of depriving ministerial berths or tickets to the nominated members.