Congress pins hope on its 'paanch nyay' plank to woo farmers, youth, women, tribals, working class in Lok Sabha polls

New Delhi: Fine-tuned and communicated all through Rahul Gandhi's two-month Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which culminated over the weekend, the 'paanch nyay' points will form the crux of Congress' poll campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.

“We are seeking a mandate for five years to implement '5 Nyay' which guarantees 25 rights,” Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said.

With the poll campaign all set to peak next month, the Congress is planning to take the ‘nyay’ message, centred around social, economic and political justice, to the voters in a structured way.

During Rahul's nearly two-month yatra from Manipur's Thoubal to Mumbai, the party unveiled the five ‘nyays’ and 25 guarantees that crystalised over discussions with citizens spanning months. “The yatra provided the structure to conceive the five ‘nyays’ and it also gave an opportunity to communicate this,” Ramesh said.

The party had even tweaked the name of the yatra to include the word ‘nyay’, as its top leader Rahul Gandhi pushed the social justice agenda forcefully with the support of party president Mallikarjun Kharge.

During the yatra, 'Kisan Nyay', including legal guarantee for MSP, was unveiled in Chhattisgarh's Ambikapur, 'Hissedari Nyay' (share in governance) in Ranchi, 'Yuva Nyay', including a mandatory apprenticeship and some income to youth) in Banswara, 'Nari Nyay' in Maharashtra's Dhule and 'Shramik Nyay' for workers in Dharavi in Mumbai. It also released an 'Adivasi Sankalp' in Maharashtra's Nandurbar.

Congress is already upbeat about the Modi government responding to one of its guarantees that talks about giving youth the right to apprenticeship. After the Congress promised that they will make apprenticeship an enforceable right, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship last week sent notices to around 1.8 lakh companies asking them to hire the mandated number of apprentices.

"I am glad that the government has copied our manifesto idea to act after ten years about our huge jobs problem. As they say imitation is the best form of flattery," Praveen Chakravarty, head of Congress' Data Analytics department and Professional Congress, told DH.

The campaign will see a renewed pitch on conducting caste census.

While some of the allies were not enthusiastic about Congress turning its attention to a yatra in the run up to the elections, Congress leaders were of the view that sitting in Delhi and just attending internal meetings would alone not have helped anyone.

They said this is for the first time that the Congress has announced poll promises at national level well before the announcement of Lok Sabha elections. Also, the announcements were not made in a hall in the Congress headquarters but in rallies, which is a “big difference for the party”, as one leader put it.

Not just the guarantees, Congress managers also find positives in the Manipur to Maharashtra yatra, the second one by Rahul after his Kanyakumari to Kashmir ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra', ahead of the Lok Sabha elections,.

It provided a platform for workers of the I.N.D.I.A partners to mingle “as one saw between Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP workers in Maharashtra and Congress, Lok Dal and Samajwadi Party workers in Uttar Pradesh”.