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The Congress is set to hold a grand meet in Lucknow, where Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to address over 50,000 workers from all 403 assembly constituencies in the state ahead of the state polls. Sharat Pradhan/Rediff.com report from Lucknow.
Having established itself as a player on the 2017 Uttar Pradesh poll turf, the Congress is taking the next major step by organising a huge convention of its grassroots workers here on Friday.
Besides several top party leaders, what is going to make it a mega show was the participation of party vice president Rahul Gandhi, who is scheduled to have an open house with over 50,000 registered party workers expected to converge from different corners of the state to Lucknow.
This is going to be the first such exercise of its kind in the 27 years that Congress has been out of power in the state, which it had earlier ruled for four long decades.
Sources in the party describe this as a part of a revival plan scripted by political strategist Prashant Kishore, who is credited with Narendra Modi’s sweep in 2014 as also Nitish Kumar’s rise to power in Bihar in 2015.
Significantly, this comes at the conclusion of a 600 km yatra undertaken from Delhi to Lucknow by newly appointed UP Congress president Raj Babbar and the party’s chief ministerial nominee Shiela Dikshit, essentially to highlight how UP had suffered during the 27 years of non-Congress rule.
With ‘27 saal -- UP behal’ or 27 years -- UP dismayed as the main focus of the ‘yatra’ which concludes here on Friday, the party is desperately trying to impress upon the people of the state that the Congress alone could rid the state of the casteist and communal politics which it says is symbolised respectively by the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Each participant at Friday’s event will not only be formally registered by filling up a form but also be entitled to spell out questions they wish to ask Rahul Gandhi.
Fifty questions picked out of the list will be answered by the Congress vice president at the event itself and subsequently put up on the social media too.
Prashant Kishore’s gameplan is to tap that chunk of the voter from different sections of society who is completely disillusioned by the three parties -- the SP, the BSP and the BJP -- which led different governments here since 1989.
The projection of Raj Babbar and Shiela Dikshit has already led these three parties to now consider Congress as a potential player in the 2017 game, for which it was not even counted earlier.
Dissentions in the Congress had also been contained through active involvement of other key leaders who have been assigned specific roles for next year’s battle of the ballot.