Promises to uplift 70 crore people falling between middle class and below poverty line, empower women and increase their representation in politics, and strong affirmative action in the private sector could be the major highlights of the Congress’ manifesto to be released on Wednesday.
The crux of the document to be released by party president Sonia Gandhi in the presence of a galaxy of leaders — including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi — will also express a firm resolve to tackle corruption, an issue that has haunted UPA-II in the form of scams like 2G, coal and Commonwealth Games.
Battling allegations of corruption and an aggressive Opposition’s campaign on the issue, the manifesto is likely to announce specific measures to check the menace as well as to bring back black money stashed abroad.
The party’s poll document will also factor in the issue of price rise and more particularly of the food basket and could advocate stringent measures to check black marketing and hoarding besides amending some rules in market regulation.
The manifesto committee is headed by AK Antony with P Chidambaram, Sushilkumar Shinde, Anand Sharma, Salman Khurshid, Sandeep Dikshit, Ajit Jogi, Renuka Chowdhary, Pl Punia, Mohan Gopal, Jairam Ramesh and Digvijay Singh as committee members.
Party sources said that Congress may have a sub-manifesto for different sections of society — including women security, recommendation to provide 20 per cent reservation in police and judiciary to women besides a strong pitch for mandatory quota for the SCs/STs in the private sector.
Ahead of manifesto release, Rahul held deliberations with over 150 young leaders on the strategy for lok Sabha polls and also sought feedback on his primary experiment to select candidates in elections.
Union Ministers RPN Singh, Sachin Pilot, Jitendra Singh, party MPs Ajay Maken, Sandeep Dikshit, Priya Dutt, Meenkashi Natarajan, former Minister Kumari Selja, Mahila Congress chief Shobha Oza and Delhi PCC chief Arvinder Singh lovely were among the youth brigade that interacted with Gandhi last late evening.
A key part of the discussion was on ways to engage youth across multiple platforms including on social media, which is being used to the hilt by the BJP in the run-up to the lok Sabha polls.