Rahul Gandhi to brainstorm with Punjab Congress leaders, Prashant Kishor on March 12

NEW DELHI: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will tomorrow meet party leaders from Punjab and brainstorm over plans for upcoming assembly polls in the presence of political strategist Prashant Kishor.

The meeting comes in the wake of a similar session with Uttar Pradesh leaders with Kishore on March 2.

Congress has been out of power in Punjab for the past decade and to end this "bad patch", the party and Rahul Gandhi are working hard to wrest back power.

Apart from the ruling SAD-BJP combine, the party is set to face a spirited challenge from AAP, which is gaining ground in the agrarian border state.

Gandhi has convened the meeting to facilitate threadbare discussions with Punjab leaders to devise a winning strategy after two successive losses, with the last one then blamed by the AICC on the "overconfidence" of the state leadership.

Congress sources said AICC has brought in Kishor to "help and assist" the Uttar Pradesh and Punjab units to craft the party's strategy for the crucial polls next year.

Kishor had played a key role in victories of Narendra Modi-led BJP in the 2014 general elections and the JD(U)-RJD- Congress alliance in Bihar assembly polls, which the Prime Minister and BJP President Amit Shah had turned into a prestige fight.

The meeting is being held at a time when state Congress leaders are getting increasingly wary about AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal's aggressive campaign plans and his strategy of targeting voters through an army of volunteers. Kishor had effectively used his band of volunteers in the Bihar polls.

Talk is that Kishor has already conducted preliminary surveys and would come armed with inputs on what the Congress needed to do to win the state, after a string of disappointing losses.

Congress has declared Punjab PCC Chief Amarinder Singh as the party's 'face' in the polls after Gandhi held a series of meetings with state leaders to persuade them to present a united face in the faction-ridden state unit.

Singh, a former Chief Minister, is considered the most formidable leader of the party in the state.

Congress had lost the last assembly elections despite Gandhi declaring Singh as the chief ministerial candidate in the midst of the campaign.

Since the debacle in the last Lok Sabha elections, Congress has been losing state after state.