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by IANS |
Chennai, Oct 26 (IANS) The Tamil Nadu Congress Committee will depute ten of its state-level functionaries for a four-day training camp at Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat to be held from November 12- 15.
The camp, according to the State Congress President, K.S. Alagiri is aimed at familiarising party functionaries with Gandhian ideals and ideology as well as party policies.
K.S. Alagiri while speaking to IANS said, "The Congress is deputing 10 of its state-level functionaries to a camp at Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat to familiarise them with the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi as well as with party policies and programmes. This is mainly to equip them to conduct grassroots level campaigns against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government's anti-Congress propaganda."
The training programme is brainchild of the Congress high command to make the local level party leaders more adept with party's ideology as well as with the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.
There would be several phases of the training programme at Sabarmati Ashram for leaders and middle-level party functionaries and according to the Congress leadership, in addition to the 10 Tamil Nadu office-bearers, 10 more lower-level functionaries would be deputed for the training sessions.
The state Congress unit is expecting the leaders who received training at the Sabarmati Ashram to impart it among other grassroots party workers and to make them more oriented in the party's ideology and answerable to the people from all sections of society.
While the BJP has a well-oiled machinery for imparting training to its cadres in its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Congress leaders were lacking in the ideological moorings and this is one reason for the Congress to take the initiative to impart training to its party leaders.
The DMK, which is an ally of the Congress, has its own training machinery and being a cadre-based political outfit, the party regularly imparts ideological training for its grassroots cadres. The main plank of the DMK is Dravidian ideology and most of the party cadres are well adept with knowledge of the party's ideology and this is where the Congress was lacking.
Congress has surprisingly done well in the 2021 Assembly elections in the state, winning 18 of the 25 seats it contested.
The Congress state leadership wants to capitalise on this poll performance and to make the party a powerful political entity in the state with deep ideological conviction.
