The Congress has not only amended its constitution, but also started off nationwide conclaves to regain control over the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes constituencies.
After the 2014 electoral defeat, the party formed a commission headed by the former Defence Minister A.K. Antony to examine the gravity of the loss. The party had apparently secured 11 crore votes across the country and “one third” of the voters belonged to what the government recognises as the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities.
A former IAS officer who now heads the party’s SC cell, K.Raju, told The Hindu that the party had realised that the “one third” factor could swing to any side and hurt its electoral progress in future. “In States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, our vote share is coming down,” said Mr.Raju. “In some States, like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab, it has remained intact.”
The party’s biggest nightmare, Mr.Raju said, was the advance of Bahujan Samaj Party, which had been aggressively venturing into new States. “Wherever the BSP has entered, they have taken away the Congress vote from SC/ST communities,” he said.
To rebuild trust among these communities, the Congress Working Committee amended the party constitution in September and increased the intra-party administrative share of SC/ST leaders from 20 per cent to 50 per cent.
Apart from that, party vice-president, Rahul Gandhi has commanded all the State units to hold conclaves between December 2015 and March 2016 where B.R. Ambedkar’s “real ideology” would be taught to the lower caste leaders.
