LokSabha 2019: ‘We will work together to ensure party candidate’s win’

- Is Congress ready to contest Pune seat?
Congress has completed its groundwork for the Lok Sabha elections. We will work together to ensure the party candidate’s victory. For the first time, we have deputed coordinators to coordinate between the block committee and the booth committee. There are 12 block committees. Every committee consists of two corporation wards. On Sunday, we called a meeting of all party office bearers and former MLAs and MLCs wherein we assigned work for the elections.

- What are the issues for the election campaign?
In 2014, BJP was not in power and they criticised the UPA government over a few projects. We admit that we failed to promote our development work. This time, we have lots of issues to raise in the election campaign. They have not done any work except changing names of earlier development policies and schemes. Now, we have substanial evidence of their corruption. 

- Do you have enough ssues related to Pune city to raise in the election campaign?
Though BJP is in power in PMC, State and at Centre, we can tell people how they have failed to carry out the developmental work in the city. We will compare the UPA government’s work with that of the BJP government. Despite the power, BJP has failed to supply regular water to Pune city. Pune metro was Congress Party’s project and BJP has just started it. There are many more issues, we will tell this to people during the election campaign. We have confidence that Congress will win as BJP has given the ticket to Girish Bapat. We have a lot of issues against Bapat including city water crisis, controversial remark on women and corruption charges in the public food supply scheme.

- Is there any coordination between NCP and Congress at present?
There is coordination with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and other small parties, which are part of the Grand Alliance. We are meeting NCP officials on a regular basis. NCP has also done its groundwork. Both parties will debut the coordinators for smooth working during the election. 

- What has the party done to make leverage social media?
Last general elections in 2017, we did not have strong presence in social media. 

This year, we have set up a separate social media wing and deputed a special person to handle it. We have also used a mobile application to have a direct connection with the party workers.