CM Siddaramaiah, senior congress leaders to seek people's inputs for manifesto

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and senior Congress leaders may soon embark on a mass contact programme to seek inputs from the electorate on their expectations from the party if voted to power again in the upcoming Assembly elections.

The manifesto-drafting exercise, helmed by senior leader M Veerappa Moily, has by and large been an internal affair involving consultations with party leaders from various regions to understand the aspirations of the people.

On Saturday last, Congress president Rahul Gandhi asked the party leaders to fan out across the state and seek inputs from the people and include them in the party manifesto for the Assembly elections.

The idea was first mooted by the Aam Aadmi Party which had reached out to voters in Delhi ahead of the 2013 Assembly elections seeking their inputs for the manifesto. The fledgling party had also come out with constituency-centric manifesto.

The Congress tried out this concept during the recently concluded Gujarat Assembly elections. Technocrat and Overseas Congress Chairman Sam Pitroda was tasked with drafting the "People's Manifesto" for Gujarat.

Pitroda had held meetings with the residents of five cities – Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Surat to prepare the manifesto covering areas such as healthcare, small and medium enterprises, job creation and environment protection.

For Karnataka, Gandhi has asked the chief minister to involve senior leaders in a similar exercise.

The Congress manifesto is expected to focus on five transformational ideas that would bring about fundamental changes in the economic and social conditions of the people of the state.

Moily had claimed that the Siddaramaiah govenment had fulfilled 98% of the promises made in the Congress manifesto for the 2013 elections.