Author: Our Special Correspondent
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: October 8, 2005
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051008/asp/nation/story_5334400.asp
Sonia Gandhi wants all other Congress-ruled
states to follow Andhra Pradesh in providing Muslims with education and job
quotas.
At the sixth conclave of party chief ministers
here, she praised Andhra chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy who has provided 5 per
cent reservation for economically backward Muslims in educational institutions
and the public services.
The Congress chief is understood to have asked
the remaining 14 chief ministers at the two-day conclave to try and see if
they could emulate Reddy.
Sonia, who opened the meeting, focused mainly
on the implementation of social schemes, asking the chief ministers to ensure
the programmes benefit the poor and aren't hijacked by middlemen.
The governments - if they are coalition regimes
-must also let the beneficiaries know that most of these schemes are the Congress's
own and not its allies'.
The Congress president said that just having
development programmes isn't enough. The point is to successfully implement
them and only close monitoring can ensure that.
The first job of the states is to break the
stranglehold of contractors and middlemen - who are often in league with bureaucrats
and politicians - on the implementation of these programmes. Else, the poor
and weaker sections of society would drift away from the party, hurting "our
electoral prospects".
"Elections are won on achievements that
can be seen and felt by the people in their day-to-day lives. It is this that
we have to collectively strive for," Sonia said.
"A coalition arrangement makes it all
the more necessary to carve out a niche for ourselves so that people know
what the unique contribution of the Congress is.
"We have to make people aware that the
national common minimum programme mostly reflects the Congress's own manifesto
for the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. And achievements of the CMP are, therefore,
naturally the fulfilment of our own objectives," she said.
