Sonia guns for all seven Assembly seats in Rae Bareli

RAE BARELI: Gearing up for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, AICC president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday met party workers here and discussed ways and means to strengthen the Congress organisational base so that it bags all seven seats falling within her Lok Sabha constituency.

Winding up her two-day visit, Ms Gandhi gave instructions to her constituency in charge KL Sharma to look into complaints of villagers, particularly on infrastructure needs. She was closeted with district congress office-bearers at the ntpc guest house to chalk out programmes for a better showing of the party at the hustings and stressed on the need to strengthen it at the grass-roots level.

She directed them to mobilise people to cast their ballots during the polls due by may next year. The Congress chief visited Nawabganj where people had queued with applications and her cavalcade stopped at Ujaria village to mingle with villagers to know first-hand, the ground reality of schemes launched by UPA government.

Ms Gandhi gave a patient hearing to the electorate but continued to steer clear of the electronic and print media outside the NTPC guest house and at Ujaria village. Some party workers and ITI workers complained that they were prevented from meeting gandhi to apprise her of their problems.

She had expressed concern over the poor condition of roads in her constituency and said she would ask a central team inquire into how these were damaged within two months of construction.