Rahul Gandhi to address works shop for Congress spokespersons

The Congress party has convened a meeting of its spokespersons of state units on 22 July, which will be addressed by party Vice President Rahul Gandhi and some ministers, to ensure better propagation of UPA’s growth story. During the two-day workshop, Rahul Gandhi is expected to impress upon the spokespersons to spread the good works done by the Congress-led UPA Government at the centre, including the most beneficial Food Security scheme.

Around 200 spokespersons from across the country will be present in the meeting which will take up issues like economy, food security initiative and also handling conventional and new media. The idea is to equip the leaders with facts and figures and material to propagate the UPA's welfare initiatives.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram will address a session during the two-day workshop on UPA's economic strides as compared to the NDA. Having decided to make the food security initiative one of its key poll planks, Food Minister K V Thomas, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and G Mohan Gopal, Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, would speak about the programme.

While I&B Minister Manish Tewari will talk about electronic media, Congress MP Deepender Hooda, who heads a team on social media, will exchange notes on challenges posed by the new media and ways to address it. Party spokesperson and MP Sandeep Dikshit, member of the research wing, will talk about accessing the work done by the research department.

AICC general secretary and chief of the communications and publicity wing, Ajay Maken said that the meeting would seek to build linkages between the AICC and PCC offices in disseminating the party’s view point on various issues.

The workshop will be attended by around 200 persons including five national spokespersons, 36 electronic media panellists and 15 persons each from NSUI and Youth Congress. The media workshop is expected to give a fillip to the setting up of communications departments in the PCCs on the line of what has been done in the AICC. Besides the conventional print and electronic media, the focus will also be to increase the presence of Congress state units on social media.

The Congress party has already finalized plans to go for live streaming of AICC Press conferences to appraise its PCCs of the Congress stand on the issues and bring uniformity in the party’s response system.