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Congress youth wing gets major booster ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha polls

The frontal organisation has been working on reaching out to the 12.7 crore first-time and second-time voters, as both groups present a different set of poll issues that the youth wing can cater to.

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Indian Youth Congress members hold a protest
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Taking a flight from their traditional dharna politics, the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) is going through a revival of sorts by building an in-house campaign team of professionals and political consultants in preparations of the 2019 Lok Sabha poll campaign. While the traditional style politics of the Congress's youth wing will continue, the frontal organisation is working on bringing together its online and offline efforts to reach out to a larger votebank ahead of the elections.

Krishna Allavaru, AICC in-charge of IYC, said the wing would try to take across its efforts to about 250-300 Lok Sabha constituencies. "The idea is to integrate the online and offline campaigns in real time to bring about changes that will matter on the ground, and ensure either teams do not work in silos," said Allavaru.

The frontal organisation has been working on reaching out to the 12.7 crore first-time and second-time voters, as both groups present a different set of poll issues that the youth wing can cater to. Allavaru said jobs, price rise and rising costs of education are primary concerns, in addition to equal rights for women.

In terms of online campaigns, the wing has built a GPS-tracked mobile application for booth workers to have a door-to-door interaction with voters, which was piloted in the recently-held Telangana, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh state elections.

The wing's national campaign in-charge, Srivatsa YB, who was earlier the president of the Karnataka Congress's social media team, said that the idea is to build an internal campaigns team which will equip youth leaders well to fight elections in the future. The team of consultants, he said, would help in strategising as well as helping to fine-tune efforts in social media and technological platforms such as the door-to-door app.

"The team will assist in putting together a campaign that is aimed at public outreach with accountability for the cadre; in short, honing their skills to fight modern elections," said Srivatsa.

Currently, the IYC has a slew of campaigns where the organisation's president Keshav Chand Yadav, vice-president BV Srinivas and other leaders are working on drumming up support for the party. This include a campaign called 'Haath Uthao' where leaders go to panchayats to speak about the shortcomings of the Modi government's policies, another called 'Aadhi Aabadi Poor Haq' where women leaders are taking down demands of women to present it to the party's manifesto committee, as well as a 'Yuva Kranti Yatra' where leaders have travelled 8,500 kms across the breadth of the country. The wing has also reached out to farmers through their 'Kisan Shakti' campaign.

The wing has launched campaigns in Maharashtra already, and is launching campaigns in Kerala today, and further, is preparing to launch campaigns in Gujarat, Telangana, Haryana, Karnataka, Goa and the Union Territories by the end of this month.

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