Congress Yuvraj Rahul Gandhi said to be annoyed with the State Party leaders over thin gathering in his rallies both in Aligarh and later in Rampur hence he reportedly postponed his proposed rallies in Salempur (Balia) and Hamirpur both scheduled for October 22. The next date of these meetings is yet to be decided.
Spokesman of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) Maroof Khan while informing cancellation of Rahul’s meeting scheduled for October 22 claimed that the decision was taken just due to `Karvachauth’ (The day on which Hindu women kept fast for long life of their husbands) falling on the same day. ``The decision to postpone the rally for some other date was taken keeping in mind that women would face problem to attend the rally in wake of their fasts", he clarified on cancellation of rallies.
However, sources said that the decision was taken as Rahul Gandhi was unhappy over the gathering during his meetings in Aligarh and Rampur and wanted to buy time so that state leadership could take corrective measures which they not done during the two earlier meetings. Rahul was also concerned with the gathering in his meeting as he was well aware that once prime ministerial candidate of Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) Narendra Modi will start his campaign in Uttar Pradesh with first rally in Kanpur on October 19, media will compare turn-out in the two rallies of Congress and BJP particularly as their were addressed by top two contenders of PM’s post.
Sources further said that Rahul Gandhi was also unhappy over the manner in which the State leadership particularly UPCC president, Nirmal Khatri, the man who was incharge of two rallies in Rampur and Aligarh, made efforts to ensure that good crowd reached to listen to Congress Yuvraj. According to sources, as the two rallies on October 9 is also first for Rahul Gandhi outside his Parliamentary constituency Amethi, after last Assembly elections so a big amount was provided to the State leadership to make all arrangements to carry people from adjacent districts to the venue to make rallies a success. However, the local leaders failed to meet out Rahul expectations as no efforts were made to bring the people to the rallies.
Interestingly, not even all the senior leaders of UPCC were summoned by State President in the two rallies to help him (Khatri) to make rally a success. However, what surprised everyone is that when Rahul is making all efforts to strengthen the media section of the UPCC and imparting training to the leaders to use social networking site besides traditional method as a potential tool to spread Party’s campaign for next Parliamentary elections, Khatri kept aside his media section and just one of the spokesman for each rally has been called by him at Aligarh and Rampur respectively. However, they too not took pain to spread Rahul’s message either through social media or in form of press notes released by UPCC office regularly on other issues.