Congress master plan for revival of the Party in this biggest state of the country seems to have fallen flat, at least on the first step. While their programme to launch `Sau Ka Dam’ (power of hundred), in four selected districts fails to take off, their move to organise a similar function at Bulundshahr 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.
Interestingly, 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 week. 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. 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 September last, 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 on last Thursday, 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.
On Saturday, when chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Congress media committee, Satyadev Tripathi was contacted, he just commented that the meetings earlier scheduled in Ambedkarnagar, Jaunpur, Hathras and Ferojabad, was cancelled due to some reason but the Party is full geared up to make an impressive show during their protest rally in Basti on October 17 and in Muzaffarnagar on October 18, to pressurise the Government to fulfill the demands of Sugarcane farmers and also cleared their all pending dues.