When a host of stars from tinsel town are already rallying behind the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bollywood glamour will be missing from the Congress campaign this time in the upcoming Parliament elections. The party would use maximum of its candidates to travel across the State and seek votes for the party.
Interestingly, this time the list included the name of Priyanka Vadra Gandhi, after Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi, but the local leaders still failed to confirm whether the Congress president’s daughter would once again confined within the limits of Rae Bareli and Amethi, or this time she would go and garner support for other candidates of the party also.
The list having 40 names as ‘star campaigners’ of the Congress released on Saturday evening also included Central Ministers from UP Beni Prasad Verma, Salman Khurshid, Shriprakash Jaiswal, RPN Singh, Jitin Prasada, 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 among others.
The other prominent names figured in the list included Rajiv Shukla, Raj Babbar (contesting from Ghaziabad), Sachin Pilot, Mohammad Azharuddin, Mohammad Kaif (contesting from Phoolpur in Allahabad), Nagma (candidate from Meerut, Ravi Kishan (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.