Many members of the Congress sub-group on social justice and empowerment, who are making proposals for the consideration of the upcoming AICC plenary session, have demanded the party pledge for introducing job reservation in the judiciary and in the private sector for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, ET has learnt.

They have also pitched for a Congress promise to roll out a national employment guarantee scheme for the urban poor, on the lines of the MGNREGA for the rural poor that the previous UPA regime had enacted. A state version of the urban job scheme has already been introduced by the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan, and the AICC panel members want to replicate it in other Congress-ruled states besides promising its national version. They justified the demands by citing post-Covid loss of jobs among urban poor amid accelerating inflation and other economic woes.

These demands come when the Congress is faced with electoral compulsions to go populist ahead of the upcoming state polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which could also see the AICC session showcasing three Congress state governments ‘reverting’ to the old pension scheme as a game-changer plank, something the party could promise in several poll-bound states.

The demand for SC/ST job quota was spearheaded by Kodikunnil Suresh at the panel with a written submission, prompting many others also to back it. Kodikunnil and others argued that if SC-ST job quota in the judiciary was a much-needed/delayed “social justice reform”, that in the private sector was needed given the “diminishing job opportunities” in government services, coinciding “with the private sector expanding” to key sectors.

Another demand is for making a statutory provision for ensuring full utilisation of the outlay for SC-ST schemes and tribal sub-plans. Panel chairman Mukul Wasnik has assured to place all these suggestions before the draft committee for the leadership’s consideration, it is learnt.

Members of the 18-member sub-group included K Raju, Meira Kumar, Sukhinder Singh Randhawa, Ajay Yadav, Imran Pratapgarhi, Shivajirao Moghe and Rajesh Lilothia.

Party Quota and HonorariumSince the Raipur AICC plenary session is slated to accelerate the implementation of the Udaipur Chintan Shivar Declaration to have a 50% quota within the Congress committees for members of the SCs, STs, OBCs, minority communities and women, several panel members suggested that the leadership ensure ‘time-bound’ and ‘rotational’ berths in the Congress Working Committee and among PCC chiefs so that leaders from these socially backward sections get the slots on a regular basis. They also felt merely having “OBC, SC, ST and minority cells” at the AICC and PCCs won’t help in reviving the Congress base in these sections. For that, according to them, the leadership should roll out a policy of recruiting full-time Congress workers from socially backward sections by giving them a monthly honorarium.

Facing BJP blitzkrieg

Some panel members lamented the BJP had made inroads into many social sections, including SC-STs, which used to back the Congress big time. They felt, compared to the Congress organisation during the UPA rule, the BJP organisation is “systematically marketing” before these social sections the Modi government’s policy/political initiatives involving them. Some members said compared to how PM Modi and the BJP “electorally marketed” the elevation of Ramnath Kovind and Droupadi Murmu as “Dalit” and “tribal Presidents”, the Congress had failed to do so effectively even when the party made the first Dalit President (KR Narayanan) and the first woman President and Lok Sabha speaker (Pratibha Patil and Meira Kumar, respectively).