Uttar Pradesh Polls: Congress to kick off campaign with Lucknow rally next Friday

NEW DELHI: The Congress will launch its election campaign for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls with a massive meeting of party workers in Lucknow on July 29. While Rahul Gandhi will inaugurate the event, party sources said the possibility of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attending the event was under consideration

The AICC has also decided to make its UP senior leaders collectively hit the road early by organising a Congress bus yatra across UP districts. The first phase of Congress yatra, named ‘27 saal UP behal’ (in 27 years UP went down the drain) will be flagged off by Sonia Gandhi at a function at the AICC headquarters on July 23, Uttar Pradesh Congress campaign committee chairman Sanjay Singh said at a news conference.

This three-day first phase of Congress bus yatra will see Uttar Pradesh Congress leaders such as chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit, AICC general secretary and UP in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad, PCC president Raj Babbar, Sanjay Singh, Pramod Tiwari, Jitin Prasada, Pradeep Mathur, RPN Singh, etc travelling across 11 districts, addressing public meetings in a bid to mobilise support for the party, out of power since 1989.

On July 23, the yatra will cover Ghaziabad, Hapur, Amroha districts. The second day will cover Moradabad, Rampur, Bareilly and Shajahanpur districts, and Hardoi, Kannauj and Kanpur on the third day. The formal campaign launch in Lucknow will be at a meeting for which the UP Congress has been asked to mobilise around 50,000 workers, party leaders said.