Congress leaders are taking a leaf out of a popular news anchor’s aggressive style of questioning as they go about training the party’s probable spokespersons.
“I was acting like Arnab Goswami (Times Now anchor) grilling the participants,” AICC’s Scheduled Caste department chairman K Raju said about the five-day training camp being undertaken by the AICC Media department for probable spokespersons of the party.
The training is aimed at making the future spokespersons battle ready to withstand media’s intense grilling and at the same time effectively project the policies and programmes of the party and the UPA Government.
Raju said that he gave a briefing to a select group about the pro-people legislations related to land Acquisition and Resettlement and Rehabilitation besides MGNREGA and special measures taken for Dalits by the UPA Government so that they could project these issues properly while participating in debates on TV channels.
The intensive training programme is being organised at the Congress War Room for two participants from each State selected from among those who had participated in the national workshop held earlier that was addressed by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
After training and screening of the participants, a few of them will be selected as AICC spokespersons. The Congress is undertaking the exercise to refurbish its media department ahead of the Assembly polls in five States which will be followed by lok Sabha polls.
Already the party has started working on an agenda to mobilise and organise Dalits under which in two persons in each village will be trained, supported and provided incentives so that they could voice the concerns of downtrodden effectively within the party fold.
Rahul has been trying hard to woo tribals and Dalits ahead of the polls and as part of this strategy he brought Raju, an IAS officer who had served as an Additional Secretary with the National Advisory Council for three years, as the chairman of the SC department of AICC.
Realising that the Congress has lost its traditional vote bank among Dalits following the rise of BSP, he has assigned Raju the task of bringing Dalits back to the Congress fold and preparing leadership among Dalits at district, State and Central levels.
Raju has had a track record of running an NGO, working in Self Help Groups movement in Andhra Pradesh and playing a key role in drafting the Food Security Bill, land Acquisition Bill and Abolition of Manual Scavenging Bill all three of which have been passed by Parliament recently.