Rahul Gandhi to launch outreach campaign to counter BJP's Sampark Abhiyan
According to sources, the Congress president will launch the programme to meet eminent personalities from different fields living in different parts of the country.
With a view to countering BJP president Amit Shah's much-hyped 'Sampark for Samarthan' (Contact for Support) programme ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, his Congress counterpart Rahul Gandhi has launched its own version.
According to sources, the Congress president will launch the programme to meet eminent personalities from different fields living in different parts of the country. He also aims to derive political mileage out of the programme.
The sources said Rahul Gandhi would meet Muslim intellectuals, professionals, social activists, religious leaders and intellectuals from other religions from different states.
Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot wrote a letter to all state general secretaries to ask them to provide list of such eminent people in their respective states. The party will draw a list of such people with whom Rahul Gandhi would meet in the days and weeks to come.
Rahul would meet these eminent personalities in Delhi or during his visit to the respective states, the sources added.
The general secretaries of the state units of the Congress have also been asked to meet these prominent citizens, the sources said.
The BJP's 'Sampark se Samarthan' programme was launched by party president Amit Shah on May 29 to mark four years of the Narendra Modi government.
On the first day, he met former Army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag. Shah decided to personally contact at least 50 people as part of the programme.
The BJP president also met personalities such as former cricketer Kapil Dev, former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash C Kashyap, former chief justice of India RC Lahoti, yog guru Baba Ramdev and Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai.
As part of the programme, about 4,000 BJP functionaries, including chief ministers, union ministers and panchayat members across the country will contact one lakh people who are eminent in their fields.
The Congress has clearly taken a leaf out of the BJP's experiment and aims at defeating its rival in its game.