Inside war room: How Congress is gearing up for Lok Sabha polls

The Congress has fielded a large number of new candidates in this general election as it seeks to avoid another embarrassing defeat at the hands of the BJP.

New Delhi: Every week zoom calls connect the Congress war room in Lutyens’ Delhi bungalow to the state war rooms to prepare candidates for the campaign and polling day, functionaries said.

The Congress’s war rooms are also organising training sessions for polling agents in every states. (PTI)

The Congress has fielded a large number of new candidates in this general election as it seeks to avoid another embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party. For the first phase of polling on April 19, the party has fielded 39 new candidates and has repeated only 16 contestants.

The war rooms have started offering a “ full package” for most of the candidates, an official in the central war room said. “We tell the candidates who the most active Congress workers in their constituencies are, we provide legal help to scrutinize their nomination forms to ensure the nomination process is foolproof,” said a second official. Both declined to be named.

For legal help, the party usually relies on in-house talent. The identified group of active workers is aimed to make the candidate’s campaign smoother. Since 2014, the Congress has developed a Shakti app to identify active workers in various constituencies down to the panchayat level in some states.

“We also give a docket to our candidates that simplifies all important guidelines of the Election Commission. While the guidelines run into 20-30 pages, we give the candidates a 4-5 page digest,” the first functionary said.

All these tasks are now complete for the party candidates for the first phase of polling. Work has now started for the second phase to be held on April 26.

A former war room veteran argued that these responsibilities are new for the functionaries. “Traditionally, the war room was meant to host secret meetings, strategy sessions away from the media glare. Even the draft manifesto had been written in the war room. But this year, some of the responsibilities have changed,” he said, seeking anonymity.

The war rooms are also organizing training sessions for polling agents in every states. “We face an aggressive BJP that has turned its organization into a vote machine. We can’t leave anything to chance in this election. And polling agents play the most crucial role on polling day,” said the second member.

The war room will also help candidates to file complaints to the poll overseer, said the first member.

From a leafy corner in the Central Delhi, the Congress party’s war room, or its operational centre for election preparations, has shifted to the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi at a bungalow next to Khan Market.

This is the first change of address of the war room in more than 15 years. In the run-up to the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Congress leaders operated from 99 South Avenue. In 2006, the 15 Gurdwara Rakabganj Road bungalow was set up as the party’s war room to hold all key strategy meetings.

The war room is headed by a former Karnataka cadre Indian Administrative Service officer Sasikanth Senthil, who quit in 2019 to join the Congress. Senthil is also fighting the Lok Sabha election from Tamil Nadu.

Engineer and Congress joint secretary Gokul Butail, Delhi unit member Naveen Sharma, public policy expert Varun Santhosh and former captain Arvind Kumar have been made vice-chairman, while Vaibhav Walia is chairman of the war room communication team.