Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi will lead the party in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, said senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid. "We will be fighting the upcoming assembly elections under the leadership of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. She is working hard to ensure that we win. Later on, she may announce the chief minister's face," said Khurshid, reported ANI.
We will be fighting the upcoming Assembly elections under the leadership of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. She is working hard to ensure that we win. Later on, she may announce the CM's face: Former Union Minister & Congress leader Salman Khurshid on Congress' CM face in UP polls (12.09) pic.twitter.com/ZtPDtV2MH8
— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 13, 2021
The Congress needs a renewed push to take back the state from the BJP. The Congress was totally decimated in the 2017 state polls winning only seven assembly seats in the 403-member UP assembly polls. In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it could manage to hold Rae Bareli Parliamentary seat of AICC chief Sonia Gandhi but lost the Gandhi family's bastion Amethi where Rahul Gandhi was humbled by Union Minister Smriti Irani.
From Thursday, Priyanka was on a three-day visit in UP to review the party's preparedness for the polls. She reviewed the district-wise progress of the party's mass contact programme Har Gaon Congress (Congress in every village). The Uttar Pradesh Congress had launched a mass contact programme on August 19 to cover the state's 30,000 villages and wards where party leaders were directed to stay for over three days during the drive. The Congress general secretary will also finalise the blueprint of party programmes for the next one month.
The Congress has already made it clear that it will not have any alliance with the Samajwadi Party or Bahujan Samaj Party this time and would prefer tie-ups with some smaller UP-centric parties. Congress' state unit chief Ajay Kumar Lallu on Sunday said his party will forge alliances only with small parties and will "not even think about" joining hands with the big ones for the elections. He also said the governments of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) that have ruled Uttar Pradesh in the last 32 years, when Congress was not in power, failed to live up to the expectations of the people and the Congress was set for a comeback in the state.
-Inputs from PTI
