170 'priority seats', mammoth team on ground: Congress gameplan for Lok Sabha 2024

170 ‘priority seats’, mammoth team on ground: Congress gameplan for Lok Sabha 2024

The Indian National Congress, in a bid to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party juggernaut in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, is making a Herculean effort. From setting up multiple war rooms to forming several quick response teams to deploying its sizeable cadre swarming the country, the grand old party is leaving no stone unturned.Â

The Congress party’s campaign began on a sluggish note. Having been outdone in the last two general elections, the Opposition party has its work cut out. This time, its campaign is more about deflecting the Narendra Modi-centric campaign and thwarting the BJP’s acceleration through micromanagement, door-to-door messaging, mass contact programs, and digital drives. Let’s take a closer look at the oldest Indian political party’s guerrilla warfare strategy in this David-Goliath battle.

THE BIG THREE

The calm and deserted look at party headquarters does not betray the behind-the-scenes hectic meetings, brainstorming sessions, and digital messaging. The party’s multiple war rooms are churning out strategies, ideas, and directions at different levels.

The strategy includes planning almost 125 rallies for its three bigwigs — Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi. The trio worked well in the Karnataka campaign, each bringing different elements to the party’s campaign as it won the state elections.

A senior leader stated, “Kharge’s experience, Rahul’s fearlessness, and Priyanka’s satire make for a complete package for building the ‘mahaul’ and calling out the BJP’s lies.” Although the spotlight will be on the Congress guarantees, the campaign in the south and the north will have different focus areas — and a dash of the regional flavour to make it relevant.

FOCUS ON ‘PRIORITY SEATS’

Instead of diverting its strength to all Lok Sabha seats, the Congress is focussing on 170 “priority seats”. A Congress leader told India Today: “We have done multiple surveys and taken ground data to draw a list of winnable seats. These have either delivered us victory in the past or have strong anti-incumbency sentiments.”

In all these seats, “micro war rooms” have been set up and local campaign coordinators will monitor them. A senior party leader aware of the strategy said, “We have assigned senior leaders as well on this job and through almost five hundred and twenty coordinators we are trying to locally monitor the campaign of our candidates.”

Regular dedicated teams have been formed to help the candidates in these seats, and weekly Zoom meetings are being conducted to connect the local teams with KC Venugopal for a SWAT analysis of the constituency and how to move forward.

WAR ROOMS

The multi-layered campaign has been divided into various groups that work out of different stations in Lutyens’ Delhi.  Daily morning meetings are held in war rooms with party leaders to plan the day’s attacks and for crisis management.

These war rooms have senior leaders manning the stations. So, the publicity Warroom (at 11 Talkatora Road) includes KC Venugopal (party general secretary) and Ajay Maken (party treasurer). The schedules for the three big names are being chalked out by the “rallies and campaign” wing (at 34 Gurdwara Rakabganj ). This includes Randeep Surjewala and Manish Chatrat, who will ensure that rallies are evenly timed, geographically distributed, and don’t overlap.

Similarly, the social media war room is headed by Supriya Shrinate, whose team of workers plan the daily digital campaign. Meanwhile, the media wings are being run from Rajesh Pilot Marg and focus on coverage in newspapers and channels across the board.

PANNA PRAMUKH VERSUS BLAs

The BJP’s wins have been attributed to its excellent election management and its battery of “panna pramukhs” acting as brand ambassadors for the saffron party. Learning from past failures, this time, the Congress is also hoping to cover maximum booths across states through its army of almost five lakh foot soldiers to cover the priority seats. This is almost half of the total booths in the country — almost 10.5 lakh.Â

These booth-level agents (BLAs) have been added to the party’s WhatsApp groups, through which, daily information flow is being maintained. They have also been entrusted with distributing 11 crore Congress Guarantees cards, that elaborate on the party’s poll promises. Call centres have been set up to receive and update feedback from these agents and to verify the work being done.

Interestingly, detailed data on booths has also been drawn up and in the states where the Congress organisation is strong or has Congress governments, almost ninety per cent of the mapping has been completed.

The Congress this time is hoping to build on its strength and minimise its weakness to stop the BJP juggernaut from scoring a hattrick in the mega poll battle.