The Pradesh Congress Committee president Pritam Singh said that despite the Congress grappling with dearth of funds, the party candidates would win hands down in the upcoming urban local body (ULB) elections thanks to the support of the common people, reeling under BJP misrule. He said while talking to the media persons at the State party office here on Wednesday that the Congress workers would manage the expenses the party would incur in the upcoming ULB elections.
Singh said that he had met the Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi last month and during the meeting, Gandhi had asked the party to start a fund collection drive in the State.
He added that though the party had been planning to start the drive it had been abandoned after the elections were announced. He accused the State BJP of remaining focused on collecting funds rather than doing any other work. “Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, BJP knows how to collect funds. The party enjoys immense money power while we have to bank on the support of the people in the ULB elections,’’ he said.
Singh informed that the party is now engaged in selecting candidates for the ULB elections with panels of probable candidates being formed. “The official list of the candidates would be declared before October 19,” he said.
Quizzed on the demand raised by the former PCC president Kishore Upadhyaya that the party’s parliamentary board should be authorised for selection of the candidates, Singh said that the party has set up a committee consisting of local MLAs, district presidents and presidents of the women wing in all the districts for selection of the candidates. “There is thus no need to call meeting of parliamentary board for this exercise,” he said.
The PCC chief also slammed the BJP Government for not completing the mandatory process of reservation in Roorkee municipal corporation which is a clear violation of the act. He claimed that the BJP has deliberately left the lacunae so as to entangle the process in further litigation.