According to sources, top Congress leadership will release the party manifesto tomorrow. Contents will be finalised by Congress Working Committee (CWC), the highest decision-making body chaired by President Rahul Gandhi.
Senior Congress leaders including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, A K Antony, Ghulam Nabi Azad, P Chidambaram, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ambika Soni and Anand Sharma will help finalise it. It is most likely to take the right-based path.
The Congress has already been working to include people from various strata of the society in order to include their views in the manifesto. The manifesto was originally supposed to be released on Thursday.
The party is likely to promise right to health, right to employment in urban areas and right to higher education. It is likely to have Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s promise of minimum income guarantee scheme.
Under the Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Congress is likely to promise an employment guarantee for the urban youth. For each bill collected or delivered the small fee given to a private contractor would go to the unemployed youth.
The Congress is likely to promise that students in universities are the responsibility of the state and nobody would be allowed to drop out for inability to pay fee. In case a student cannot pay the tuition fee, he would be able to take an easy no strings attached loan or given a grace period of a few years to pay the fee.
A right to health is another likely promise that will be made through a universal healthcare scheme. The scheme will aim to give an opportunity to every individual to walk into a hospital and avail treatment.
It will strive to be different from the BJP government’s Ayushman Bharat programme, which according to the feedback from the Congress-ruled states does not use the present network of primary healthcare centres to its capacity.
The Congress is likely to follow the 2009 model on farm distress promising a complete loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh.
