Congress lost connect with people: Rahul Gandhi

Udaipur/New Delhi: Acknowledging that the Congress' connection with people has been 'broken', Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi announced on Sunday that the party will undertake a yatra in October to re-establish and strengthen it.

The Congress on Sunday adopted a 'Nav Sankalp' — a roadmap for wide-ranging reforms in the party organisation to make it battle-ready for the next round of Assembly and Lok Sabha polls.

Addressing the closing session of the party's three-day 'Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir' here, Gandhi said, "We have to accept that the Congress' connection with the people has been broken." "Our fight is for ideology. We have to go to the people and sit with them, the connection the party had with people has to be re-established," he said. "We have decided that the Congress party in October will got to people and take out a yatra and strengthen the relation...with people.

This cannot happen with short-cuts," he said. Hailing the frank discussions at the Shivir, Gandhi said which other political party would allow this kind of a discussion where the party leadership is bluntly told what the Congress party feels.

"Certainly, the BJP, and RSS would never allow such a thing," he said. The Congress has always provided a platform where people can hold deliberations without any fear or worry, he said.

The party has adopted the 'one-family, one ticket' formula with the rider that another family member seeking to contest elections should have worked in the party in an exemplary manner for at least five years.

The party, the sources said, has also approved 50 per cent representation to SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities at all levels of the organisation, as part of its social engineering efforts to win the confidence of the weaker and oppressed sections of society. The resolution was adopted by the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party's highest decision-making body, after the final round of deliberations on key issues. The CWC met earlier in the day in the sidelines of the Shivir.