Sonia to lead tie-up talks from the front

The Congress stepped up the Lok Sabha poll preparedness forming a high-level committee headed by party chief Sonia Gandhi to firm up alliances with like-minded secular parties including the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

The four-hour-long Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting decided to constitute a high-level team headed by the Congress president "to initiate moves to reach pre-poll alliances and adjustments with secular forces to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA)," senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee said.

After the meeting, Gandhi said she would talk to NCP chief Sharad Pawar on a possible tie-up between the two parties. "Certainly the NCP is the party with whom I will be talking," to firm up alliances, Gandhi said.

Gandhi was responding to a question about the party's strategy on alliances with the NCP, which has been talking about keeping its option open with regard to joining the NDA.

She said there were difficulties in the formation of a secular front, "but I am ready to take up the challenge".

On the CWC meeting, Gandhi said it was convened to discuss strategies and preparations of the party for the coming Lok Sabha polls. It also discussed issues to be taken up in the party's manifesto, campaign strategy and media publicity, she said.

Senior party leader Manmohan Singh had been deputed to hold talks with DMK chief M Karunanidhi for an electoral tie-up, Mukherjee said.

The meeting also decided to set up an election management committee with Gandhi as its chairperson, which would have several sub-committees to look after aspects like manifesto, publicity, media and campaign, Mukherjee said. The committee would start functioning immediately, he added.

The committee, Mukherjee said, also decided to entrust experienced leaders with the responsibility of helping the party in the Lok Sabha election. Each leader, he said, would be assigned one big state or two or three small states and would devote most of their time there.

It also suggested taking help of professionals for surveys, preparations of publicity material and streamlined and effective system for planning of speakers' programmes during election campaign, both at the AICC and the PCC levels, he said.

The CWC was of the view that a special team be constituted to prepare a detailed expose of the NDA government's failure.

It decided to set up constituency-level election management committees chaired by the party candidate to run the campaign on a constituency basis with the support of district and block party committees, Mukherjee said.

It also decided to involve elected Congress and "friendly" independent members of panchayats and nagarpalikas in the poll campaign more "directly and systematically", he said.

The CWC also decided to have a booth-wise strategy with the active cooperation of the AICC in consultation with the local party units, said Mukherjee, who headed a five-member panel which went into party's debacle in the recent Assembly polls and had suggested wide-ranging measures to strengthen the party organisation at the grass-root level.

Whether Left leaders would be campaign for the Congress in states other than West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, he said, "better ask them".

He also parried a question on Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee saying she was welcome in the Congress if she quit the NDA.