While BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is leading the entire party campaign on his shoulders, including Uttar Pradesh, no one in the Congress is interested to use Manmohan Singh, the two-time Prime Minister in the UPA Government at the Centre, for their campaign in the State.
So far, the candidates have demanded only the Gandhi family scion — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi — to campaign in their constituencies in order to further boost their morale in the coming Parliament elections. It may be mentioned that Priyanka Gandhi would only campaign in her mother Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Rae Bareli and brother Rahul’s constituency Amethi.
“So far we received a dozen demands of party’s star campaigners from different candidates hailing from Western Uttar Pradesh where elections would be held in first and second phase”, confirmed one of the incharge of ‘War Room’ of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, here on Wednesday. He claimed that the candidates demanded Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi to hold meetings under their constituencies quoting that it will boost their prospect in the coming elections.
Rahul Gandhi had also gave his clearance on the demand and he will hold two rallies in Ghaziabad, from where film star and sitting MP, Raj Babbar, is contesting on Congress ticket and another rally in Saharanpur. Both the meetings will be addressed by Rahul Gandhi on coming Saturday, confirmed chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Media Committee chairman, Satyavrat Tripathi, here on Wednesday afternoon. Sonia Gandhi’s is also scheduled to visit for rally in Western UP on coming Friday but her programme is still not finalised by the All India Congress Committee. The party’s War Room incharge claimed that they not received a single demand of PM Manmohan Singh, who tops the 40 leaders of the Congress.
RsRsNo, not a single leader so far demanded rally of Manmohan Singh in their constituencies”, one of the incharges confirmed. He further said that none of the leaders also went ahead to use the Glamour of film stars like Raj Babbar or Nagma, who both were also contestants from Ghaziabad and Meerut Parliament seats respectively.
Interestingly, the incharge confirmed that some of Party leaders in Western UP wanted Rastriya lok Dal (RlD) for their campaign. RsRsWe received four demands from Western UP where Congress candidates demanded meetings of RlD’s chief Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Chowdhary”, the incharge confirmed adding that no one demanded two time MP and actress Jaya Parda, who is contesting on RlD ticket from Bijnore. The incharge further claimed that one of leader contesting from Samajwadi Party’s strong-hold had put a peculiar demand asking the RsWar Room’ to arrange a rally of lalu Prasad Yadav’s in his constituency as the area has been dominated by the RsYadav’ community.
It may be mentioned that Bollywood glamour will be missing from the Congress campaign this time in the on-going Parliament elections. The Party would use maximum of its candidates to travel across the state and seek votes for the Party. Besides the names of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra Gandhi, the list having 40 names as Rsstar campaigners’ of the Congress released on Saturday evening also included Central ministers from UP, Beni Prasad Verma Salman Khursheed, Shree Prakash Jaiswal, RPN Singh, Jitin Prasad, Pradeep Jain Aditya, along with Pl Puniya, enjoying minister status. All the ministers are in fray this time also. Besides both former and sitting state presidents – Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Nirmal Khatri, trying their luck once again from lucknow and Faizabad respectively, both former and sitting Congress legislative Party leaders – Pramod Tewari, Pradeep Mathur, veteran Congress leaders, Mohisina Kidwai, Moti lal Vora, Meera Kumar, Gulam Nabi Azad, Digvijay Singh, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Sushil Kumar Shinde etc. The other prominent names figured in the list included Rajiv Shukla, Raj Babbar (contesting from Ghaziabad), Sachin Pilot, Mohamed Azaharudeen, Mohamed Kaif (contesting from Phoolpur in Allahabad), Nagma (candidate from Meerut, Ravi Kishen (candidate from Jaunpur), and Capt Satish Sharma. Surprisingly, four MlAs –Dr Mohamed Muslim, Ajay Kapoor, Anugrah Narain Singh and Akhilesh Pratap Singh’s name has been also included in the star campigners list.