The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Tuesday authorised the party’s national president, Mallikarjun Kharge, to give his final approval to the manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections.

The decision was taken in the presence of Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, and the party’s national general secretary of Organisation KC Venugopal during a meeting of the CWC, convened by Kharge at the party headquarters here.

The CWC arrived at the decision after more than three hours of deliberations on the draft manifesto for the general elections. Notably, the Congress’ Manifesto Committee, headed by former Union minister and party stalwart P Chidambaram, handed over the draft manifesto to Kharge earlier this month.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, Venugopal said, “Congress Working Committee had a detailed discussion on the 2024 manifesto for Lok Sabha elections. The CWC authorised the Congress president to give final approval for the manifesto. We will decide the date of announcement of the manifesto without any delay.”

The senior party leader also informed that the party’s highest decision-making body hailed Gandhi for the Bharat Jodo Nyay yatra that covered a distance of 6,500 km in 63 days.

Referring to the five guarantees (Kisan Nyay, Yuva Nyay, Naari Nyay, Shramik Nyay, and Hissedari Nyay) announced by Rahul during the yatra, Venugopal said the CWC had prepared a plan to take this message to the grassroots level.

Taking on the BJP on the economic front, he said, “The government is totally ignoring the youths of the country, farmers, women and workers of this country.”

The Congress leader pointed out that his party’s main objective was to highlight the issues of youth, women, farmers, workers, and those suffering from different walks of life. “That’s why we are emphasising these five guarantees in a bigger way for this election. It will be the game-changer of this election,” he said.

Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Venugopal said, “We are asking what happened to the guarantee he had given to the country in 2014. All the guarantees are lies. Our guarantee, whatever guarantee we are giving to the people, we are fulfilling it. We have done it in Karnataka and Telangana,” he said.

“In a democracy, people are masters, not Modi ji. They are going to decide who will rule this country. Modi is making jumlas,” he added.

Kharge, in his opening remarks, said, “The country is fervently demanding a change. The guarantees currently being touted by the present government would have the same fate as that of the ‘India Shining’ slogan of 2004.”‘

He added that we are all responsible for ensuring that our manifesto gets the widest publicity in different states and that our commitments are taken to every household across the country and people at large.