Cong sets ball rolling for LS manifesto

'Tap the young voters' appears to be tagline for the Congress as it gears up for the Lok Sabha elections next year.

Before embarking on the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, Congress president Rahul Gandhi chaired a meeting of the party's Core Committee for the Lok Sabha elections, which discussed the broad strategy for unseating the Modi government next year.

The key focus of the meeting was getting the right alliance partners and reaching an understanding to avoid division of anti-BJP votes.

Another highlight was attracting young voters, who had backed the BJP in 2014.

On Monday, the 19-member Manifesto Committee held its first meeting to discuss the broad contours of ideas the party would offer to the electorate as an alternative to programmes outlined by Modi during his tenure.

"Broadly, the manifesto would present alternative ways of handling the economy, focus on the small and medium enterprise sectors for job creation, step up food processing infrastructure to complement agriculture," a senior party leader said.

The 19-member manifesto committee has senior leaders P Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh, Salman Khurshid, Sam Pitroda, Bhalchandra Mungekar, Manpreet Badal as members.

"It is a preliminary meeting today, we will keep meeting often," a member of the manifesto committee said on Monday.

He said the key focus of the party would be to reach out to the youth and assure them of Congress' plans for a better future. The party would tells voters how demonetisation and GST were twin blows to the economy that led to job losses across the country.

The Congress would also spell out its idea of a single-slab GST as opposed to the multi-slab tax structure unveiled by the Modi government in July last year.

The party's publicity committee is also expected to meet later this week to plan a blueprint of the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.