TMC plans anti-graft forum to woo voters

Besides West Bengal, Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tripura will see the Trinamool plan rolling out.

After getting an endorsement from anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare, Mamata Banerjee is taking her anti-corruption plank a step further with her party Trinamool Congress rolling out a “quasi political forum”, ‘Fight for India’. The aim is to bring together civil society activists and dovetail perceptible middle-class angst against corruption and price rise with her election campaign.

In six states, the Fight for India campaign will kick off by March 15 with people receiving multi-lingual calls from the party’s call centre seeking inputs to shape its manifesto. The Aam Aadmi Party had firmed up its Delhi election manifesto with direct inputs from people.

Besides West Bengal, Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tripura will see the Trinamool plan rolling out.

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“It is a quasi political forum where the civil society can take its fight against corruption and campaign for good governance. It is a two-way process of engaging with people through the most powerful device, the mobile phone. We will take suggestions directly from people to bring out our manifesto,” TMC Rajya Sabha chief whip Derek O’Brien said.

A third-party call centre is being set up. Sending out mass SMSes and pesky, recorded calls carrying election messages to people at random is in vogue among parties. The Fight for India seeks to be different by initiating interactive, two-way communication so that civil society’s ideas can find their way into the party. People can record feedback messages or speak to call centre executives at a specified time of the day.

Party sources said with Hazare and Mamata speaking favourably about each other, the possibility of the activist from Ralegan Siddhi campaigning for TMC in select states looks real at present. The TMC will also conduct group discussion and interview of 14 final-year students of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kolkata, who have applied for two month internship with the party.