By Shankar Raj*
Hyderabad: Sensing an advantage, the Congress has started flooding Telangana with poll promises ahead of the November 30 Assembly elections. After announcing six guarantees, the Congress Party in the state is now drying the ink of more promises, that would embellish its poll manifesto.
“We are giving final touches to the Congress election manifesto. While the six main guarantees made by Sonia Gandhi would be the crux of the manifesto, it would have welfare schemes covering all age groups and communities,” said manifesto committee chairman Sridhar Babu. The plan is to release it during the party’s ongoing unity bus yatra ‘Vijayabheri’.
The Congress Party has proposed to offer one tola (10 grams) of gold along with ₹1 lakh financial assistance for the marriage of poor girls as against Rs 1.16 lakh being given by the BRS government under the Kalyana Lakshmi scheme. The party has also decided to promise employees and teachers that a Congress government would revert to the old pension scheme, which has been a major demand.
“We promised an old pension scheme in Himachal Pradesh and are implementing it. We shall do it in Telangana too,” he said.
As the Congress Party has started adding more promises to its poll menu, others also have started demanding a pie in the cake. A week ago, the transgender community met Sridhar Babu and explained to him the difficulties faced by them as there was no provision for them in public toilets, reservation of seats in buses and others. They wanted the Congress manifesto to have facilities for their community. Sridhar Babu assured them that their demands would be included in the manifesto.
Providing free travel in Hyderabad metro rail to poor girl students and poor women is also one of the proposals with the Congress, which is yet to be finalised. However, the party has decided to provide free internet to students.
“Right from domestic help to auto and cab drivers, gig workers and representatives of other sections of society have come and met us with their demands. It has given us a feeling that the people are waiting to vote for the Congress,” Babu said.
The Congress Party is aware that it stormed to power in Karnataka defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party by surfing on a series of poll promises.
Meanwhile, in a bitter attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president KT Rama Rao said the Congress Party is the “No. 1 villain” of Telangana, which has never spoken on the promises made to the new state in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.
Rao said while the BRS government fulfilled the promises made to the people in Telangana for the past nine-and-half years, the Congress government in Karnataka retracted its promises in less than 100 days. The party was not even providing electricity for five hours to farmers.
*Shankar Raj is former Editor of The New Indian Express, Karnataka and Kerala, and writes regularly on current affairs.
