 "Sonia Gandhi")
Congress President Sonia Gandhi is slated to hold a road show in Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on August 2. The event is part of a two-month long campaign the Congress has planned with an eye on the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls due in early 2017.
The Congress is trying to revive itself in Uttar Pradesh, with party president Sonia, vice-president Rahul Gandhi besides Priyanka Gandhi Vadra spearheading the campaign. The Congress hasn’t had a government in Lucknow in 27 years. The last Congress government in the state was in 1989.
The Congress campaign will highlight this fact and how Uttar Pradesh has suffered in these years with the slogan “Sattais saal, UP behaal’ (27 years when UP suffered)”. A source said the campaign, to be launched from Congress national headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday, will highlight 27 years of poor governance and will be three-pronged.
It will have 27 bus ‘yatras’, covering the length and breadth of the state, with key UP state unit office bearers, including state unit chief Raj Babbar, party’s chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit, and national general secretary for UP Ghulam Nabi Azad. The first such ‘bus yatra’ will be flagged off on Saturday, which will travel 600 km from Delhi to Kanpur, to cover Ghaziabad, Hapur, Amroha and Moradabad on the first day.
On July 29, Rahul Gandhi will meet 50,000 Congress workers in Lucknow, sources said. The Congress President would have a road show in Varanasi on August 2.
