A member of the team confirmed to DNA the formation of the committee, and said that while it is not a reconstituted publicity committee, the leaders will look at "all aspects of the Lok Sabha campaign".
With barely a month for the elections, the Congress on Tuesday formed a campaign monitoring committee, naming Sam Pitroda as the chairman. Members of the committee, which include Pawan Khera, Rohan Gupta, Praveen Chakravarthy, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Divya Spandana and Manish Chatrath, will be responsible for the party's Lok Sabha campaign.
A member of the team confirmed to DNA the formation of the committee, and said that while it is not a reconstituted publicity committee, the leaders will look at "all aspects of the Lok Sabha campaign". Party functionaries involved said that as senior members of the party's publicity committee will be busy contesting elections, the committee has been formed to pitch in and monitor.
Members of the publicity campaign includes Manish Tiwari, Bhakta Charan Das, Pramod Tiwari, Praveen Chakravarty, Ambika Soni, Milind Deora, Mukul Wasnik, Kumar Ketkar, Kapil Sibal, Pawan Khera, Sanjay Singh, VD Satheesan, Jaiveer Shergill, Rajeev Shukla, Divya Spandana, and Randeep Surjewala, with Anand Sharma as chairman.
Sources in the party said that the delay with the publicity committee's selection of an ad agency to carry out its Lok Sabha campaign has made party president Rahul Gandhi uncomfortable. With barely a month for the elections, Congress is yet to unveil a campaign or a slogan. On the other hand, the BJP has released a slew of slogans already.
After months of deliberations, the party has now zeroed in on three ad companies to run different aspects of its campaign, including DesignBoxed for its social media outreach.
Party functionaries said that senior leaders have noted that, while in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the selection process for the ad company that would run the party's campaign involved the Core Committee from the start, this year the initial selection of five contenders from ten applicants was carried out by the chairman of the publicity committee, which was then forwarded to the Core Committee. In a meeting held on January 30-31, these issues were raised.
Additionally, the slow pace of developments within were also pointed at.
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