Congress banks on guarantees translating to votes again

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru

The ruling Congress is once again trying to turn its guarantee schemes into votes in the upcoming by-polls for three Assembly segments. Sandur in Ballari district, Shiggaon in Haveri district and Channapatna in Ramanagar district go to polls on November 13 and the results will be out on November 23. The Grand Old Party has prepared lists of guarantee beneficiaries in all three seats complete with names, phone numbers and addresses. It is said that party workers will engage in a door-to-door campaign to convince guarantee beneficiaries to repose their faith in them and cast their ballot for the Congress. In Channapatna, Deputy Chief Minister and Karnataka Congress president DK Shvakumar has already deployed the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) guarantee implementation committee for a campaign in every gram panchayat. A similar model will follow in Sandur and Shiggaon.

The five guarantees refer to Shakti scheme (free non-luxury government bus travel for women), Gruha Jyoti (free electricity for domestic consumers who expend less than 200 units), Gruha Lakshmi (Rs 2,000 monthly allowance for women whose spouses aren’t direct tax payers), Yuva Nidhi (Rs 3,000 monthly allowances for unemployed graduates and Rs 1,500 for unemployed diploma holders from the 2022-23 academic year) and Anna Bhagya (five kgs of free rice plus cash worth another five kgs of rice). The ruling party is leaning heavily on the translation of the welfare schemes to votes despite it not translating to votes in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year when the Congress bagged only nine of the 28 constituencies in Karnataka. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the other hand had snagged 19 seats, two of which went to the JD(S) while BJP won 17.