TNCC pins its hope on efforts to create “an army” of full-time workers like RSS

In a State where the Congress enjoys no strong political clout, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) is aspiring to create “an army of workers” — similar to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — that can take the party’s ideology and policies directly to the voters through village panchayat and ward committees.

This initiative is different from membership drives or booth committees of the past; it is an attempt to create Congress committees (with presidents, secretaries, and vice-presidents) at village panchayats and wards, party sources say.

Since December last year, the party has tried to constitute “verified” committees under the supervision of senior leader Peter Alphonse; the credentials of the committee members are vetted before they are given identity cards with photographs and QR codes.

TNCC general secretary M. Vasantharaj, tasked with coordinating the effort, said, “Around 16,700 committees have been formed. The target is 25,000 committees. Our team will call the [phone] numbers to verify the members’ names and villages/wards and whether they are the Congress members. The aim is to prevent data fudging. The party may change the presidents of the AICC, the Pradesh Congress Committees, the Block Congress Committees, and the District Congress Committees; but the village panchayat and ward committees will not change. “We want to create a cadre of Congress workers who can be engaged at the grassroots,” he said.

Party sources said around 40,000 identity cards had been distributed and the goal was to find at least two lakh Congress workers. “These people are already there on the ground; what we are doing is to unite them. Once we have Congress workers on the ground, we have to engage them continuously. Hopefully, the party leadership will be able to do it,” Mr. Vasantharaj said.

However, a senior leader is not so enthusiastic. He points to similar initiatives in the past when the membership data were made up. He says, “Around 1,531 people were given identity cards in north Chennai recently, thanks to the efforts of North Chennai District Congress Committee president Dilli Babu. But the party couldn’t mobilise even 300 workers for the National Herald case protest. The fact is that the party’s vote-bank has come down by 2%. The claims of parties, like the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, that they have more clout than the Congress is true.”