Cong on war-footing for assembly polls

Bhopal, Apr 15: Madhya Pradesh Congress in the leadership of PCC president Suresh Pachauri working on war-footings to make party battle ready for November 2008 assembly elections. As a first step, the party has decided to raise orgnaisaitonal structure in the assembly segments where most of the conventional party leaders and their family members have joined ruling BJP in past four and a half years.

A crash membership drive would also be launched throughout the state. Besides, the party is toning up the district and block level Congress committees. Simultaneously efforts are on to streamline functioning of party working in the state. Plans are also being chalked out for convening party conventions and meetings in all 230 assembly constituencies.

PCC president Pachauri said that a lot of work has to be done in short span of time, but the united Congress leaders are making all out efforts to strengthen the party. Meanwhile, Pachauri convened a meeting of all the party spokespersons at State Congress office on Tuesday to chalk out further strategy to deal with the challenges before the party. Out of seven spokespersons, KK Mishra and Brijmohan Shrivastava remained absent as they were out of station. Those preset in the meeting were- JP Dhanopiya, Rakesh Chaudhary, Manak Agrawal and Mukesh Nayak.

Party sources said that the party is also planning to introduce divisional level structure for spokespersons. Since, there are seven spokespersons, they might handle the situation properly by being in divisional headquarters. Only one or two spokespersons are likely to be stationed in Bhopal. Sources also claimed that the Betul by-election outcome would also play an important role in further strategy of the party.