Cong CMs, film stars to rev up Delhi campaign

The Congress plans to rope in chief ministers of key states and film stars-turned-politicians to rev up its virtually non-existent campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections.

Top on the charts are chief ministers of Uttarakhand, Kerala, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh who would be asked to reach out to the regional voters in the cosmopolitan city.
Senior Congress leader P C Chacko has written to the chief ministers — Harish Rawat, Oomen Chandy, Siddaramaiah and Virbhadra Singh — to contribute to the campaign.
Delhiites would also see film stars Raj Babbar, Kushbu and Nagma reach out to them to seek their vote.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi is expected to address a rally in the capital while vice-president Rahul Gandhi is likely to take part in two public meetings. The party is also planning to organise a roadshow by Rahul.

A senior Congress leader said the poor response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s January 10 election rally was a clear indicator that Delhiites were in no mood to attend such meetings. “We plan to focus on smaller gathering instead of mega rallies,” the leader said.

Interestingly, the Congress’ past attempts to organise smaller rallies had failed miserably as voters did not turn up for Rahul’s public meetings during the December 2013 Delhi Assembly elections. At one such event in Mongolpuri, the then chief minister Shiela Dikshit had to plead with the people to stay till Rahul spoke.

The Congress, it appears, has learnt from its past mistakes and announced most of its candidates much before the election dates were announced on January 12.It has also appointed 14 observers, many of them former MPs and state ministers, to assist the high command in zeroing in on the right candidate.

Former Punjab MP Vijay Inder Singla is in-charge of the New Delhi segment. The other observers are former Rajasthan minister Shanti Dhariwal, former MP Lal Chand Kataria, Hira Singh Bisht from Uttarakhand, former Haryana ministers Ajay Yadav, Geeta Bhukkal and Aftab Ahmed, former Himachal ministers Ram Lal Thakur and Kuldip Sharma and former speaker of Himachal Assembly Gangu Ram Musafir. 

Also, 70 present and former MLAs from neighbouring states are in Delhi. with each assigned an Assembly segment to monitor.