The seriousness of reviving the Congress in the biggest state of the country once against came to the fore when two top leaders who themselves chalked out programmes to give the Party a new lease of life, either remained absent from the programs or postponed it at the last moment, reportedly to avoid embarrassment.
While All India Congress Committee’s general secretary, Madhusudan Mistri, who announced to lead the programme, remained absent from both the protest show in Basti and Muzaffarnagar, state president, Nirmal Khatri, too skipped the agitation in Muzaffarnagar, citing health problem. The two leaders also failed to organise `Sau Ka Dam’ (power of hundred), which was also a part of first step for revival of the Congress scheduled for earlier this month.
Interestingly, instead of selected districts, the two leaders tried to organise a similar function at Bulundshahr but it also backfired after local Congressmen clashed and stalled the proceedings particularly to oppose secretary of All India Congress Committee, who is one of the zonal incharges here in Uttar Pradesh. It may be mentioned that there is strong resentment amongst the local Congressmen on AICC general secretary, Madhusudan Mistri’s formula to keep state president Nirmal Khatri, away from selecting district and city presidents and the job has been handed over to the four AICC secretaries, who were co-incharge of Party affairs under Mistri here in UP. Almost all the four secretaries faced strong protest and alleged to be even manhandled in districts like, Kanpur, Deoria, Gorakhpur and in Bulundhshahr this month. The four secretaries had selected all the district and city presidents after making a brief visits to their towns and now the old Congressmen who were ignored are agitated over the selection process.
Surprisingly, Congress Vice-President, Rahul Gandhi, who is taking keen interest in UP politics so far remained a mute spectator to the failure of one after another formula adopted by Mistri as well as state president, Nirmal Khatri, for revival of the Party. Not only this, he also not make any reaction in the manner in which the two leaders were handling the State affairs. It may be mentioned that Rahul posed full faith in the two leaders and almost given them free hand to put the Party back on track after it was derailed 25-years back. However, Kharti, who spent more time in Delhi or Faizabad, than in lucknow since he took charge of the Party more than two years back, still failed to find trusted men in the Party hence he took about 18-months to select State level Committee that too due to Parliament elections but soon after that, he dissolved the unit and till date, the Party is running under temporary arrangement.
After two days meet with senior leaders of the Party which included former minister, state presidents etc in last week of September, Mistri and Khatri came out with a master plan that they would held meeting in four districts Ambedkarnagar-8th October, Jaunpur-9th October, Hathras-11th October and Ferojabad-12th October), in which beside chalking out plan with local Congressmen, the two leaders would also interact with 100 persons who were well-wisher of the Party and had ideas t o share that how Congress could be revived in UP. The main agenda of Mistri and Khatri, is how to establish a re-connect of the Party with the people which is totally missing at present and how to win their trust which they enjoyed for several decades.
However, this step of the Congress master plan for revival of the Party falls flat as no such function has been organised in the above four districts and the Party even not cited any reason behind it. The Party instead, decided to organise a similar function in Bulundshahr but they felt the heat of anger of the Party workers, when local Congressmen staged a strong protest, and even manhandled some leaders including a AICC secretary, forcing Khatri and Mistri to slip to another place to complete the formalities of interacting with a group of hundred persons.
like the above programme, Congress much hyped programme of organising demonstration to pressurize government to fulfill the demands of cane growers also falls flat as Mistri, who was suppose to lead the protesters did not turned up in Basti on last Friday. Again on Saturday, when both Mistri and Khatri announced their presence in Muzaffarnagar during demonstration on Saturday, both the leaders kept away leaving the other leaders to complete the formalities of showing their support for the farmers.