While campaigning for the first phase of civic polls ended on Monday, the Congress campaign was yet to pick up with state chief Raj Babbar making cosmetic efforts to make his party’s presence felt.
Interestingly, due to large-scale infighting withing the state unit, only half a dozen leaders like Sanjay Singh, Pramod Tewari, Pl Punia, Jitin Prasad etc were holding a few meetings to make their presence felt in the campaign.
Congress sources confirmed that after failing to find `winnable’ candidates in majority of the seats for Mayoral elections, the cash-starved Uttar Pradesh Congress is also finding itself short of serious leaders who were ready to extensively tour the state and lead the campaign for the civic polls.
Besides, bickering over tickets along with apathy of the team formed by Raj Babbar for ticket distribution and candidate selection, also forced top leaders to keep themselves away and avoid the enraged party workers.
Babbar too is taking up campaign in select pockets of the state that too for Mayoral candidates. In lucknow, Babbar has held three street corner meetings so far and the onerous task of making the party’s presence felt now lies on Bollywood actress -turned-politico Nagma, who is likely to take out a road-show in lucknow on coming Wednesday.
Except for the rulion BJP where Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is leading the campaign from the front, chiefs of two major parties - Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party have so far kept themselves aloof from campaigning.
This is for the first time in the history of UP that all major parties are contesting urban civic polls yet leaders were taking no risk to campaign for their candidates.
In 2012 Urban local Bodies poll, the BJP had won 10 out of 12 Mayoral seats. However, it won only 42 seats of Chairpersons in Municipal Boards and 36 in Nagar Pnchayats.
Polling for 16 Nagar Nigams, 198 Nagar Palika and 438 Nagar Panchayat polls would be held in three-phases on November 22, 26 and 29 with counting is scheduled for December 1.