Failure of the Congress central leadership to give a date to the State party unit in regard to holding a public rally in Uttarakhand, seems to have come as a major disappointment for the State party activists in the aftermath of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘historic’ rally in Uttarakhand on December 15.
It is worth to mention here that the State Congress party which is facing many challenges, including timely rehabilitation of the natural disaster-hit people, desperately needs re-strategising its policies to strike a rapport with the general public, as the party insiders here believe.
In this process, it wanted to go to the public by highlighting its popular schemes through public rally. But it has so far not been able to do so.
Amid growing popularity of BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as the BJP claims, emergence of some political parties like AAP has only made it inevitable for the ruling Congress Party (both at the Centre and State) to have a relook at its style of functioning.
Though Congress’ central leadership has already hinted at going for a change within the party structure and its way of functioning to reach out to the public, it is not clear as and when it is going to fulfill the Uttarakhand Congress’ demand for organising a public rally to be addressed by the Central leadership in the hill State.
The State Congress Party had urged its Central leadership to address a public rally in Uttarakhand twice in the recent past i.e. in October. But it has so far not received any confirmation from the party high command in regard to holding a public rally in Uttarakhand.
Now in the light of Opposition BJP’s public rally on Sunday last, poor response of the party high command to State Congress Party’s desire to hold a public rally to be addressed by party vice president Rahul Gandhi has only demoralised the party activists here, admit the party insiders.
It may be recalled that according to the State Congress Party insiders, Congress Party vice- president Rahul Gandhi was expected to address the public rally here in Uttarakhand sometime in October.
later as per the party high command’s work schedule the public rally was postponed. Since then about two months have passed, but the party central leadership has failed to give its confirmation for this long pending public meet.
The public rally that we wanted to be addressed by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi sometime in October is now overdue, said Shilpi Arora, State Congress spokesperson, while talking to The Pioneer.
Among other reasons recently held assembly elections in some of the States were the major reasons behind postponing the public rally in Uttarakhand as obviously the Congress Party was busy in these assembly polls, she further said.
The assembly elections are now over. Hopefully, the Congress central leadership would definitely look into this matter and the rally would be held in due course of time, she added