Cong hunts for TV-savvy spokespersons

The Congress is holding a workshop to handpick spokespersons from a group of 60 party members

The Congress is leaving no stone unturned to put in place a panel of ‘television-savvy’ spokespersons to be the face of the party in the run up to 2014.

Not content with its existing 36 panelists (only a handful are effective, say sources), the party is in the process of putting across about 30 new faces as national spokespersons — the qualifications needed are to be articulate and assertive. The party is holding a five-day workshop here next week to handpick them from a select group of 60 from across the country.

The workshop has dual purposes — to put these Congressmen through a rigorous five-day training of mock television debates and to be a ‘talent search.’

Participants of this workshop have been sent reading material on topics which any one representing the party should be well versed in — food security, land acquisition, the fiscal scenario and rupee depreciation, women’s safety issues, issues pertaining to scheduled castes/scheduled tribes, etc.

Participants have been shortlisted from 300 odd party members, including some from the National Students Union of India and Youth Congress who attended a two-day communication workshop in July, where every state was asked to nominate five spokespersons.

Around 25 topics would be discussed, spread across five days, wherein experts would introduce the topic and grill participants during a mock television discussion.

Sources in the know of things said that the party had taken note of the assessment of its current television spokespersons and found that television faces needed to be equipped with skills on how to parry questions, be aggressive if need be and put across the party’s viewpoint assertively. Rahul Gandhi, the party vice-president, is expected to attend the workshop proceedings on one of the days.

Party sources disclosed that despite having an existing list of 36 spokespersons, only a handful were able to effectively handle the grilling that TV debates and anchors had started putting them through. So they were being overtaxed, having to hop across several TV studios on a given evening.

This is a new phase for the party, which has been accustomed to having the same old Congress faces representing them. With Gandhi taking charge of day-to-day affairs of the party and appointing Ajay Maken as the communications in-charge, things have got a lot more ‘younger and fresher’, with the party now boldly putting across young faces as its national spokespersons.