Himachal Pradesh Election 2022: Congress' campaign planning could have been better, says Anand Sharma
In August, Sharma had resigned from the chairmanship of the party's steering committee for the state. Sharma, in a letter to then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had reportedly said he was not consulted on the planning for the assembly elections and cited several examples where he was not even invited for discussions.
FollowSenior Congress leader Anand Sharma on Thursday (November 10) said the party's campaign planning for the upcoming Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls could have been "much better" with the deployment of senior leaders, and rued that his services were not fully utilised.
Sharma also said that Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has led a spirited campaign in the state and he was confident that the Congress would win the polls and get a "stable majority".
He also said both the BJP and the Congress were "culpable" for not having assessed the implications of the new pension scheme and termed as an "error of judgment" the move to opt for it when Virbhadra Singh was the chief minister.
Speaking to news agency PTI, Sharma said he had campaigned to the best of his ability in the polls wherever the Congress candidates invited him but there was no centralised planning for his campaign.
"We are better placed than 2017 because we have taken up issues which are of special concern to the masses whether it is unemployment, inflation, the old pension scheme or the Agnipath recruitment scheme," Sharma said.
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Sharma, a member of the steering committee of the party set up by AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge till a new Congress Working Committee is formed, exuded confidence that his party would outperform the BJP despite the ruling party's high voltage campaign involving Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several ministers "carpet bombing" with public meetings.
Asked about the Congress pitching its campaign on bringing back the old pension scheme (OPS) and the NPS introduction in the state after the OPS was discontinued in 2004, he said, "Both the BJP and Congress are culpable of not having assessed the implications of the new pension scheme".
"It was perhaps an error of judgement to opt for it when we had Virbhadra Singh as CM. Unfortunately, we did not correct it when we returned to power in the state in 2012 and Mr. P Chidambaram was Finance Minister," Sharma said.
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Sharma, who was among the Group of 23 leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 seeking large-scale reforms, said the party had neither involved him in strategising the campaign nor taken his inputs in preparing the manifesto for the polls.
In August, Sharma had resigned from the chairmanship of the party's steering committee for the state. Sharma, in a letter to then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had reportedly said he was not consulted on the planning for the assembly elections and cited several examples where he was not even invited for discussions.
Assembly election to the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly will be held on November 12 and the results will be out on December 8.
(With inputs from PTI)
