With the crucial Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh round the corner, the Congress has apparently taken a leaf out of the BJP's book. It has planned a three-day bus yatra, beginning Sunday. The party announced that the yatra will be flagged off by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and will initially cover a distance of 600 km from Delhi to Kanpur.
Coined as "27 saal UP behaal", the Congress bus yatra is being undertaken to woo voters in the Hindi heartland and also aims to unite various factions in the party and present a united face of the UP Congress. The yatra will cover four districts on each day and will take the route from Delhi to Ghaziabad and will cover Hapur, Amroha and Moradabad, where it will halt on the first day. It will then travel to Shahjahanpur, covering Rampur and Bareilly and on the third day it will cover Hardoi, Kannauj and then end at Kanpur.
Top Congress leaders who will be part of the yatra and will address it at different places include party general secretary and in-charge of party's UP affairs Ghulam Nabi Azad, UP Congress chief Raj Babbar and its Chief Ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit. Other important leaders will also address it, including ClP leader in the State Pradeep Mathur and Coordination Committee chairman Pramod Tiwari.
Asked if Priyanka Gandhi will also be part of the yatra, UP Congress Campaign Committee chief Sanjay Singh said, "We have been demanding for so many years that she plays an active role and we are sure that she will accede to our demand this time."
The yatra will propagate the message to the people of Uttar Pradesh on the failures and misgovernance by successive Governments of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and BJP in Uttar Pradesh for the last 27 years. "It will campaign in such a way that we reach out to every voter at least three or four times," said a AICC functionary. After the first phase of Yatra it will be followed by a meeting of the UP Congress in lucknow on July 29 that will be attended by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi.