Padyatras, small meetings, stops in villages, towns: Cong announces 15-day campaign on price rise

As part of the ‘Jan Jagran Abhiyan’ (awareness campaign), the party said its leaders and workers will take out week-long marches with night halts in the villages, towns and cities. “Instead of public meetings, small group meetings will be held to communicate nuances of inflation and its adverse effects on everyday lives of the common people,” Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said.

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who heads the party’s committee to plan, organise and coordinate sustained mass agitations, said there is a realisation that the agitations undertaken by the party have not drawn enough public participation.

“The Congress party has felt that the agitations that we undertake… our Congress workers participate in it… but the way the people should be involved in these agitations… that has not happened,” Singh said.
Instead of holding dharnas or rallies, the new mode of campaign will see Congress workers and leaders taking out prabhat pheris (morning processions) from at 6am followed by a cleanliness drive, preferably in weaker section neighbourhoods. “Each padyatri will wear a Gandhi cap for the purpose of identification,” Venugopal said.

The party is also organising a training camp for leaders across the country in Sevagram, Maharashtra in the run-up to the campaign to educate them about the issues to be raised. The idea is to train 10 delegates each from every Assembly and Parliamentary constituency on the messages the party wants to convey.

At the CWC meeting last month, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said the statements issued by the AICC on issues facing the nation do not percolate to the party’s cadre at the block and district level, and that there is a lack of clarity and cohesion even among the party’s state-level leaders on policy issues.
“The BJP government is carrying on its public harassment campaign. Now the Congress will run its Jan Jagaran Abhiyan. We will seek answers to this injustice,” tweeted senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Addressing a press conference, Venugopal, Singh and Congress communication department head Randeep Surjewala said price rise was destroying livelihoods and adding to people’s woes. The Modi government had proved to be the country’s most “expensive regime”, Surjewala said.