The Congress campaign for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, which got derailed due to its party president Sonia Gandhi's sudden illness during the Varanasi roadshow, will be revised with series of road show and bus yatras.
The party has planned around 100 pre-poll election programmes in the form of bus yatras, padyatras, and door-to-door engagements to reach out to voters. The second leg of bus yatra of its senior leaders will begin on August 21 and end during the second week of October, around Dussehra. The yatras have been planned meticulously by top leadership in consultation with poll strategist Prashant Kishor.
The party said one yatra would be led by the party's Chief Ministerial face Sheila Dikshit and the other one by State unit chief Raj Babbar. While campaign committee chief Sanjay Singh and a host of leaders will accompany Dikshit, coordination panel head Pramod Tiwari will accompany Babbar.
The two-month yatras are expected to cover around 60 districts, including Nehru-Gandhi pocket boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is expected to be in Amethi in the second week of September where the first leg of one of the yatras would culminate.
Buoyed by the good response to Sonia Gandhi's roadshow in Varanasi, Congress General Secretary in charge of UP Ghulam Nabi Azad said that while one cavalcade of senior leaders would traverse 33 districts, another would pass through 33 other districts in the politically crucial State.
The exercise will conclude on Oct 9.
"We are fighting the elections to win it and not to just increase our tally," said Azad while addressing a joint press conference with Sheila Dikshit, Raj Babbar and some other senior state leaders.
Congress has been out of power in the State for 27 long years. It had secured just 28 out of the total 403 seats in the last Assembly polls held in 2012. The state is slated to have next Assembly polls early next year.
Targetting the BJP, Samajwadi Party and the BSP, he said these parties have "ruined" UP for 27 years. "UP was the state which provided India with PMs and freedom fighters of all faiths," the Congress leader said.