To plan the road map for the next Assembly elections in the State, a high level meeting of the Congress, attended by both state and central level leaders was held in the national capital on Wednesday.
The meeting was also said to be attended by Prashant Kishore, the man who said to have designed the campaign for Bharatiya Janta Party in the last Parliament elections and for Nitish Kumar in the recent Bihar polls.
Besides deciding strategies, the leaders also discussed whether to have truck with other smaller outfits or to go it alone, to declare a chief ministerial candidate just on the patern of Bihar, to declare name of at least hundred candidates by the mid of this year and how to go ahead with their campaign amongst the public to seek their support for the oldest political outfit and ensure comeback in the State after a gap of about three decades.
Interestingly, many leaders wanted to bring Priyanka Gandhi to main lime-light by giving her charge of Uttar Pradesh and if possible, also to announce her name as the new incumbent for chief minister’s post.
Sources in the Congress maintained that after series of discussions and meetings here at State head quarter to decide how they should go in the next Assembly elections, a high level meeting of the Party held in New Delhi to give the `strategy’ some more concrete shape before making a final call. Though the meeting was kept a closely guarded secret, but sources maintained that besides senior leaders which included All India Congress General Secretary, Madhusudan Mistri, also incharge of Party affairs here in Uttar Pradesh, the meeting was also attended by all the four AICC secretaries who were looking after UPCC, senior leaders from UP which included state president, Nirmal Khatri, Pramod Tewari, Congress legislative Party leader Pradeep Mathur, Pl Punia, Rita Bhauguna Joshi, Jitin Prasad, Pradeep Jain Aditya, Shree Prakash Jaiswal, Salman Khursheed and many other former MPs and ministers representing Uttar Pradesh.
Sources further said that the leaders had divided views over going for truck with any main political outfits particularly Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, but majority of them were not against having an understanding with smaller outfits like their last partner Rastriya lok Dal etc. Similarly, leaders were also divided over announcing a chief ministerial candidate but when some of them raised the name of Priyanka Gandhi, demanding either to give her charge of Party affairs in Uttar Pradesh or to announce her as CM nominee, none of them came out with any opposition.
According to sources, almost all the hundred delegates had a consensus that half of the names, or at least hundred candidates of the Party should be announced at least six months in advance. It may be mentioned that Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi had already assured that all the sitting MlAs, would get tickets from the same constituency. Similarly, all the candidates who remained runner-up in the last Assembly elections are also likely to get ticket from the same constituency.