Congress flags off campaign for UP with bus tour
NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday formally launched the party’s campaign for the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh by flagging off a three-day bus yatra from Delhi to Kanpur.
Titled ‘27 Saal UP Behaal’, the yatra will travel 600 km across four districts of the state each day. It will cover Ghaziabad, Hapur, Amroha and Moradabad on the first day, followed by Shahjahanpur, Rampur and Bareilly on the second. The bus yatra will pass through Hardoi and Kannauj before culminating in Kanpur on the final day.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders watched as the bus was flagged off from the party’s national headquarters at 24, Akbar Road amid chanting of Vedic hymns and blowing of the conch.
Senior leaders such as Ghulam Nabi Azad, Sheila Dikshit, Raj Babbar and Pramod Tiwari will address the yatra en route. The plan, according to Congress leaders, is to reach out to every voter at least three or four times in the run-up to the polls – scheduled for February-March next year.
The party recently announced former Delhi chief minister Dikshit as the chief ministerial candidate in the state, and actorturned-politician Babbar as the state party chief.
Uttar Pradesh Congress campaign committee chairman Sanjay Singh said the yatra will be followed by a meeting of the state unit – chaired by Rahul – in Lucknow on July 29. Sonia Gandhi will participate in a road show at Varanasi on August 2.
“The aim is to highlight the failures and misgovernance by successive governments of the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh for the last 27 years,” Singh said.