After stirring up political rivals through her maiden road show with brother and Congress president Rahul Gandhi a day before in Lucknow, AICC general secretary (incharge of UP East) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra commenced her Parliamentary constituency-wise meetings with party leaders at the state
Congress office on Mall Avenue on Tuesday.
Earlier, on Monday evening, Priyanka airdashed to Jaipur to be with husband Robert Vadra, who was there for quizzing by Enforcement
Directorate (ED) officials. She flew back to the state capital around 1 pm on Tuesday.
However, as soon as Priyanka started interacting with party leaders, hundreds of leaders from several districts manhandled Sewa Dal leaders entrusted to control a gatecrash and shouted slogans alleging that local leaders ignored seasoned workers and brought their cronies to interact with
Priyanka. As the situation worsened, state Congress chief Raj Babbar came out and defused the situation assuring that no decision on party ticket would be taken on Tuesday. "Priyanka is just interacting with sitting and former Congress MPs, legislators, and incharges of districts, wards etc. No one else was participating in it," Babbar clarified.
He assured agitated workers that Priyanka would visit their respective parliamentary constituencies and interact with all those seeking tickets.
After Babbar’s appeal, the supporters called off their protest. Another AICC general secretary and incharge of UP West Jyotiraditya Scindia started the meeting at the state party headquarters at 'Nehru Bhawan' on Tuesday morning and around noon, he went to Amausi airport to receive
Priyanka. He interacted with leaders from Saharanpur. After Priyanka's arrival at the Jawahar Bhawan, both leaders busied themselves in holding meeting with leaders from various Lok Sabha constituencies.
While Priyanka met leaders at the conference hall on the first floor, Scindia went through the process at an adjoining room. "There was some changes in
Lok Sabha seatwise meetings and the schedule was redone due to delay in Priyanka's arrival. The Dhaurara Lok Sabha seat being supervised by Priyanka was handed over to Scindia and, similarly, several other seats were changed," he said.
There are around 20 leaders in each Lok Sabha constituency and Priyanka noted down their views on the party's strength at the grassroot level and allowed participants to speak out their minds for around an hour.
"Priyanka was asking the leaders ways and means to strengthen the party at the grassroot and asked them to be free to speak about the party's weakness and their problems," revealed former MP from Unnao Anu Tandon, who participated in once such meeting. She said that Priyanka had infused a new energy in workers and they all were now ready to fight with full strength. Priyanka is likely to continue her meeting with Congressmen till late on Tuesday night along with Scindia, though it was not confirmed yet whether she would stay back for the night in Lucknow or again go to Jaipur or Delhi.
Priyanka and Scindia are slated to stay in Lucknow till February 15 and meet leaders of all 80 Lok Sabha seats.
On Tuesday, Priyanka was to interact with leaders from Lucknow, Mohanlalganj, Prayagraj, Ambedkarnagar, Sitapur, Kaushambhi, Fatehpur,
Bahraich, Phoolpur, Unnao, Ayodhya etc, but till late Tuesday evening, she could only finsih her discussions with leaders from Sitapur, Unnao, Mohanlalganj and Lucknow.