Eyeing a comeback in the national Capital, the Congress seems to be focusing on votebanks in slums, unauthorised colonies and villages of Delhi. On Tuesday, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi will lead a roadshow from Kalkaji Assembly constituency’s slum cluster where the party plans to woo voters by reviving the dream of in-situ development.
The party has also planned a public meeting at Shastri Park in Gandhi Nagar constituency to focus on minority votes. According to Congress leaders, “the Congress Government has begun the first project of in-situ construction of flats to rehabilitate the hutment dwellers of JJ clusters”. A second factor for choosing this venue, lovely said, was that they have grounds big enough to accommodate large crowds. This move had failed previously, when Rahul Gandhi’s Ambedkar Nagar rally in November 2013 barely pulled any crowd.
The Congress had lost its traditional votebank among the underprivileged sections to the AAP in the 2013 polls. The Kalkaji area is the site of an under-construction DDA project for in-situ rehabilitation of the transit camps. The show will cite the project which was cleared during the Congress rule to promise more such settlements.
On January 29, Rahul will address a rally at Shastri Park to reach out to voters in East and North-East Delhi dominated by unauthorised colonies, resettlements and slums. Congress president Sonia Gandhi will also hold a rally in Badarpur on February 1, addressing unauthorised colonies, villages and minority-dominated areas in Badarpur, Okhla and Tughlaqabad constituencies. Meanwhile, the party said the second part of its manifesto, with special focus on the urban poor, is likely to be released on February 2.