As the election fever grips in, all the parties are reaching out to people this time to hear their voice and prepare the manifestos. Rajeev Gowda, the convener of the Congress' manifesto committee tweeted that his team had traveled to over 160 locations and received thousands of suggestions, some of them online. Mr.Gowda is Rajyasabha MP and senior Karnataka leader thanked Rahul Gandhi on the initiative.

Mr.Gowda said they are committed to listening to the voice of the public. As per the twitter post, several of the team members including former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, Assam MP Sushmita Dev and ex-MP Lalitesh Patil Tripathi are part of the team that contributes to the Manifesto

The 19-member committee's focus is on drafting a document on issues such as job creation, strengthening small and medium enterprises and agricultural productivity. 

Congress has also set up a webpage to crowdsource the ideas from the public and people can share ideas at https://manifesto.inc.in/ under "Your Voice".Incidentally, BJP is working on a similar idea to crowdsource the manifesto from the public.

Congress's manifesto committee met for the first time last September to start the process of preparing the vision document for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While there were separate manifestos for the states, Congress fumbled in Telangana but managed to sail through in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.