Youth script success story

The Congress has passed the youth test, and with flying colours. Nine out of 11 Indian Youth Congress candidates have emerged winners in this election. And the party’s young brigade attributes this “80 per cent success rate” to Rahul Gandhi, reports Aurangzeb Naqshbandi.

The Congress has passed the youth test, and with flying colours.

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Nine out of 11 Indian Youth Congress candidates have emerged winners in this election. And the party’s young brigade attributes this “80 per cent success rate” to Rahul Gandhi.

“He worked relentlessly to rejuvenate the youth and student wings, which helped the party establish a direct connect with young voters,” said Youth Congress president Ashok Tanwar.

Rahul, he added, utilised the services of the youth cadre in an effective and methodical manner to help the Congress pluck unexpected gains from various parts of the country.

“In Punjab, we first identified different booths. The newly elected 3,000 youth leaders were then given the responsibility of these booths,” Tanwar, 33, said. “Their task was to garner support for Congress candidates by reaching out to every voter.”

The distribution of booths too was meticulously planned — a district president was assigned 10 booths, a vice-president five and a secretary two.

After the declaration of detailed results, said Tanwar, the performance of each youth leader would be evaluated as per the booths assigned. This would allow us to find out what went wrong, and where.

The experiment was a success in Punjab where the Congress won eight seats and the BJP-SAD combine bagged five.

Out of three Youth Congress candidates in Punjab, two — Vijay Inder Singla (Sangrur) and Ravneet Singh (Anandpur Sahib) — won while Sukhwinder Singh Danny lost to Paramjit Kaur Gulshan (SAD) from Faridkot.

In last year’s MP assembly elections, 13 out of 18 candidates had emerged winners.

Rahul had set a challenging task for Tanwar — to revitalise the Youth Congress. “I pursued that task diligently and Rahul rewarded me by offering a ticket.”

A Dalit leader, Tanwar defeated INLD candidate Sita Ram from Sirsa in Haryana.

The Youth Congress has enrolled seven lakh youth in Gujarat and 3.5 lakh in Punjab. “This is due to Rahul’s efforts. Young India is looking up to the Congress and Rahul to take the country to the future,” he said.