UPA launches campaign to sell N-deal to masses

HARD SELL: UPA has launched a promotional campaign, placing full-page adervertisements in the newspapers.

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

26/11: Terror comes precariously close

Featured Slideshows

New Delhi: The UPA may have failed to convince the Left Front to endorse the Indo-US nuclear deal, but now it wants to leave no stone unturned to win over the masses.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi has asked her party to promote the deal before the UPA Government goes in for the crucial trust vote on July 22.

"We have been given a task to take the issues of nuclear deal forward as they are important for the nation's energy security. We have been asked to to reach out to the masses and explain the the nuclear deal to them," Congress Spokesperson Veerappa Moily said.

The party has already launched a promotional campaign, placing full-page advertisements in the newspapers. The Congress also plans to bring out booklets explaining the benefits of the nuclear deal.

Muslim leaders and MPs too have been asked to pitch for the deal in order to convince people that the deal is not anti-Muslim. Apart from that, senior party leaders will tour across the country explaining the deal’s worth.

However, the move has caused concern within the Congress. Certain sections within the party worry that the UPA might come across as a party more concerned about the nuclear deal than inflation.

Muslims leaders like Saif-ud-din Soz have begun to argue that the deal may adversely affect the party in Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.

While the Congress has decided to back Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the deal, it does realise that it is barely an election issue. It is also aware that it can’t depend on its relations with the Samajwadi Party in the long run. Perhaps, that’s the reason why it has kept the window to the Left open hoping that its anti-BJP stand would in the end win over its opposition to the deal.