Kesri wants Congress to revive Garibi Hatao

George Iype in New Delhi

In an attempt to boost the Congress's sagging morale, party president Sitaram Kesri is planning to revive the Garibi Hatao slogan invented in 1971 by Indira Gandhi when she was prime minister.

Congress sources said Kesri has held consultations with all state party leaders and senior Congress Working Committee members on the viability of falling back on Indira Gandhi's famous initiative which won the party a landslide in the 1971 general election.

If a consensus emerges within various Congress sections on the issue, the Congress leadership will launch a countrywide Garibi Hatao action plan when the All India Congress Committee convenes in April.

Senior CWC member and Kesri aide Ahmed Patel told Rediff On The NeT that the move to base the party's programmes and policies on Garibi Hatao is not borne out of any electoral compulsions.

''We feel the beneficiaries of the United Front government's economic programmes are not the poor, the peasantry and the working class,'' he said.

The Congress leadership, Patel said, is planning to launch pragmatic policies that will benefit "the ordinary working class across the country."

''Garibi Hatao is the need of the hour and only the Congress can do it,'' he added.

Party sources said Kesri will appoint an expert committee of Congress MPs and party veterans who will chalk out a new pro-poor action plan.

But before launching the campaign during the AICC session, Kesri will make key changes in the organisational set-up which he had promised when he took over the party leadership last year.

Thus he will replace heads of the Pradesh Congress Committees in at least five states -- Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh -- where the party polled less than 30 per cent of the votes cast.

Kesri also plans to please some of the party's disgruntled leaders. Though former Union ministers Arjun Singh and Narain Dutt Tiwari returned to the fold last year, Kesri had yet not given them any party posts. Congress insiders expect Kesri to induct the duo on the CWC shortly.