NEW DELHI: As the Congress-led opposition put up a surprising performance in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, the women voters in Uttar Pradesh who voted for the grand old party started thronging outside its office in Luckow this week seeking fulfilment of the pre-election promises.
The women were reported to have gathered to demand Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s pre-election announcement of the Mahalakshmi scheme to provide female heads of Below Poverty Line (BPL) families with a monthly stipend of Rs 8,500 directly to their account.
Several women, being lured by the scheme, have also opened bank accounts to be able to avail of ‘guarantee card’ benefits. As part of the election campaign, the Congress also launched the ‘Ghar Ghar Guarantee’ programme to reach nearly 80 million households with 25 guarantees. The women carried the Congress Nyay Guarantee Patra to their office and wanted to submit forms for Rs 1 lakh promised to them by the grand old party, while others were looking for details of other schemes.
An opposition leader in Telangana said, “Congress has already distributed guarantee cards in Telangana and Karnataka during the states’ assembly polls. Therefore there is no such incident being reported in these states.”
After the success of guarantee cards in the two southern states of Telangana and Karnataka, the grand old party was prompted to print another six crore cards with 25 guarantees under ‘Paanch Nyay’ or five pillars of justice, which include ‘Yuva Nyay’, ‘Naari Nyay’, ‘Kisaan Nyay’, ‘Shramik Nyay’, and ‘Hissedari Nyay’, formulated during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which formed the main crux of the manifesto.
The party insiders closely associated with the central Congress war room, who coordinate and monitor the distribution, say that the guarantee cards have been the “hero of the campaign”, as they personalised the campaign for the voters.