Congress to hold agitations in Oct over economic slowdown

New Delhi, Sep 12 (IANS) The Congress Party will organise a massive agitation across the country from October 15 to 25 over economic slowdown, party leaders said here on Thursday.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, Congress General Secretary K. C. Venugopal said, "We have decided to organise state-level convention on economic slowdown from 20 to 30 September."

Venugopal said that the party has planned nationwide massive agitation throughout the country on the issue of economic slowdown between October 15 and 25.

The Congress leader also said that the party will celebrate 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary by organising a large scale 'padayatra' on October 2, in order to educate people about Mahatma's ideals of freedom and Swaraj.

"We have decided to have a membership campaign from October this year which will be both digital and traditional," he said.

Venugopal said that each and every leader of the party will participate in the house-to-house campaign for members in their respective area.

Sharing the plans of the party to train leaders across the country, he said, "We have decided that the Congress will organise training activities, building up workers. It was decided to have a more contemporary training module. The emphasis will be on communicating with youth and to educate them about true nationalism and secularism."

The announcement was made after Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi held meeting with all the general secretaries, state in-charges, state unit chiefs, Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leaders.

This was the first meeting that Sonia Gandhi chaired after being appointed as party chief on August 10.

To a question, over former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi missing from the meeting, party leader R. P. N. Singh said, "This was the meeting of the general secretaries, state in-charges, state unit chiefs, CLPs. Thus invitation was sent to all those leaders only."

To a question by IANS over Union Minister Piyush Goyal's statement dismissing economic slowdown, Singh said, "This is exactly what Manmohan Singhji has said, first the government has to acknowledge that there is a problem in the economy. By coming up with insane explanation, the problem is not going to go away."

Goyal stirred a row earlier in the day, when he said that "don't go by all these calculations you see on TV, that if the country has to become a $5 tn economy, it will have to grow at 12 per cent but right now it is currently growing at 6-7 per cent".

Goyal then went on to say that "Don't get into those maths. Those maths have never helped Einstein discover gravity."

"If he had only gone by structured formulae and what was past knowledge, I don't think there would have been any innovation in this world," Goyal added.