Congress develops database to help it win Dalit voters and 84 reserved seats
New Delhi: Congress is employing a multipronged approach to woo Dalit voters ahead of 2014 general elections.
The party has decided to focus mainly on 11 states including Uttar Pradesh that have the most reserved seats, besides identifying the reasons for the party’s successive defeats in these segments and picking Scheduled Caste candidates well in advance.
The party has identified the states that have more than three reserved constituencies each, K Raju, head of Congress’ Scheduled Castes department told ET. “We are developing a database on what have been the issues in these constituencies, who were the candidates, the factors why the party has not done well and the general moorings in the parliamentary segments. This will help us in selecting better candidates,” said Raju, a former bureaucrat who was hand-picked by Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi to head the department that had been nearly defunct.
The database will include constituency-wise details of prospective candidates, electoral pattern over the past three elections, socio-political groups active in the constituency, electoral issues and reasons for the party’s defeats.
In all, there are 84 parliamentary constituencies across the country reserved for Scheduled Castes. Of these, 72 are in the states that the party has decided to concentrate on – Uttar Pradesh (17), Andhra Pradesh (7), Bihar (6), Karnataka (5), Madhya Pradesh (4), Maharashtra (5), West Bengal (10), Odisha (3), Punjab (4), Rajasthan (4) and Tamil Nadu (7).
Congress won just 24 of these 72 seats in 2009, drawing a blank in states including West Bengal and Odisha.
In the crucial Hindi heartland, where it has lost considerable clout over the past five years, it held two reserved seats in Uttar Pradesh, one in Bihar and two in Madhya Pradesh. Apart from early selection of candidates, the party has decided to depute Dalit ministers from the Centre for special rallies to these constituencies. A panel of Dalit ministers and senior Congress leaders – including Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Mallikarjuna Kharge – has been drawn up.
Source: The Economic Times
