Hyderabad: The Congress in Andhra Pradesh (AP) will not have any alliance with other parties in the 2019 state and Lok Sabha elections, Oommen Chandy, in-charge of the party in the state, said on Wednesday.
The only alliance will be “with the people”, said Chandy, who held a month-long review of the party’s activities in July. The party will begin a house-to-house drive in the coming days as part of the election campaign.
“We met and discussed party affairs and have decided not to have any political alliance. We are going to the people only. For that, we met all our district headquarter presidents and leaders. That work was completed yesterday,” said Chandy at a press conference at Vijayawada on Wednesday. A review was held in all of AP’s 175 assembly constituencies, he said.
As of now, the Congress in AP does not have a single seat in the assembly, nor does it have a member of Parliament from the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state, as a result of the sentiment of the public which blamed it for bifurcating AP and Telangana in 2014. The fallout also resulted in several leaders, including the then chief minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, quitting the party. Reddy, however, rejoined the party on 13 July.
“We have planned a two-way action. To strengthen the party and to have close contact with people. For the latter, we have planned a house-to-house visit, apart from forming booth level committees in all 44,000 of voting booths in Andhra Pradesh,” said Chandy.
The Congress in the state will create mandal-level committees, assembly constituency committees and coordination committees in preparation of the 2019 elections, he said.
“All of those will be formed before 15 September and we will train leaders for the (election) campaign. By 2 October, under the leadership of these new committees, workers in their respective booths will go house-to-house and have a dialogue about the current political situation at the state and national level,” Chandy said.
As part of the house-to-house campaign, the Congress will also ask the public to donate Re1 to its party fund in the state. Welcoming Reddy back to the party fold, Chandy also appealed to other former Congress leaders to return. “We are trying to contact our old leaders and are requesting them to come back,” he said.