The State Congress on Wednesday held a meeting of its executive members and district presidents here to work out a strategy in order to take its membership drive to the booth level and prepare a roadmap for the next year’s panchayat polls.
The party targets to rope in new members from each and every polling booth and take failures of the BJD Government in areas such as NFSA ration card distribution, water and electricity issues to the voters before the panchayat polls.
In order to garner public support, the party also plans to create awareness among the masses from April 15 so that they can get more work through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme.
“Today we decided that the District Congress Committee presidents will hold meetings with block presidents and panchayat presidents starting from April 15. We will discuss ways to ensure that the benefits of NREGA reach people. We would help people get in touch with the authorities when discrepancies arise and take necessary action when the authorities don’t listen to the rightful demands of the public,” said president of Cuttack District Congress Committee Prakash Behera.
“We also decided to strengthen the membership drive. We have achieved the initial target of inducting five lakh new members to the party fold. However, we would make another attempt to take the drive to each and every booth,” he added.
Out of the 33 organisational districts of the party, 32 district presidents were present at the meeting. The Kalahandi district president was conspicuously missing.