Security has been stepped up but the Congress still faces a major challenge — to prevent a repeat of Deoria where villagers decamped with the stringed wooden cots set up for a public meeting addressed by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
The Congress leader on Tuesday launched his 2,500km-long Deoria-Delhi Kisan Yatra from the eastern Uttar Pradesh district to reach out to voters to revive the party’s fortunes in the country’s most populous state that goes to the polls in early 2017.
Undeterred by the loot of khats, the local word for strung cots, Gandhi will hold more such meetings — more than one on many days — during the month-long yatra.
But Tuesday’s ‘loot’ has left the party embarrassed. Questions are being raised about poll strategist Prashant Kishore (PK), who has planned the campaign, for failing to take into account the local conditions while organising khat sabhas.
“Team PK should have suggested that cots be borrowed from nearby villages instead of getting them from vendors,” a party leader said.
“The Congress is using the cots to get more and more villagers involved,” a Congress leader said on condition of anonymity.
Kishore, who has since moved on, was the one who came with the famous chai pe charcha campaign for Narendra Modi in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The khats were made of bamboo and plastic rope and were for temporary use. These were supplied by a vendor who may have bought them from the local market, another leader said.
As Gandhi is expected to hold one or more khat sabhas a day, the party would need at least 5,000 cots daily. Around 3,000 were used in Deoria, party sources told HT. A second khat sabha was also organised during the day.
It is difficult to get an exact number of cots the party would need but sources said the Congress had called for five to six sets of at least 3,000 cots.
(Sourced from agencies, Feature image courtesy:oneindia.com)
