Operation Akarsh: Congress targets grassroots leaders to win LS polls

Hyderabad: The Congress party seems to be working out a new strategy to poach BRS leaders at the level of municipal, mandal and Zilla Parishad to win at least 12 seats in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.

The party feels that more than the big leaders, role of the local body representatives was more crucial to win the Lok Sabha seats. Hence, the MLAs have been tasked with the responsibility of achieving this goal. This, the Congress feels, could be one of the key strategies to continue its winning streak it had tasted in the recent Assembly polls.

The state Congress leadership is said to have directed all the 64 Congress MLAs to work in that direction. On the other hand, the party is also open to induct any important BRS leaders who would like to migrate from the pink party. There have been reports that some of the important leaders of the BRS are in touch with the top leadership of the state Congress.

It may be mentioned here that the BRS is dominating all the local bodies in the southern Telangana districts of old Khammam, Nalgonda, Ranga Reddy and Mahbubnagar districts. The Congress leadership feels that though it had swept the Assembly polls in south Telangana, there is every possibility of the local body representatives playing spoilsport in the Lok Sabha elections.

Hence, it feels that the best option was to poach municipal chairmen, corporators, councilors, MPTC, ZPTC members, mandal presidents and ZP chairmen as well as Agricultural Societies, Cooperative and Marketing Society members, a senior Congress leader said. It remains to be seen what kind of assurances the Congress party would give to those who agree to migrate. The party is likely to promise some political posts to such people. The task of implementing ‘Operation Akarsh’ has been assigned to all the MLAs and ministers who are in-charge of various districts.