The Congress party flag.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Meetings with castes and communities, fighting the upcoming MLC elections in teachers and graduate constituencies, putting candidates in large numbers in the local body elections and appointing 19.78 lakh office bearers up to the grassroots by December-end are part of an action plan drawn by the Congress to revive the party in Uttar Pradesh.
The main aim of these moves is to make the Congress battle ready for the 2027 Assembly elections as well as identifying potential leaders at the grassroot level to face the challenges posed by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in the state where the party has relegated to an almost insignificant player.
One of the immediate tasks identified is to organise theme-based meetings with leaders, opinion makers and influencers in castes and communities, including minorities as well as professional groups like lawyers. “We are holding such meetings in October-November,” Congress General Secretary and UP in-charge Avinash Pande told DH.
Such meetings will target Jats, Gurjars, Passi, Nishad, Lodhi and upper castes among others where party leaders will interact with community leaders and influence. The first one will be a ‘Kisan Sammelan’ likely on October 14 in Muzaffarnagar in western UP where Jats, who are predominantly farmers, are an influential section.
Following state-level meetings, the party is also planning such deliberations at the district level.
Congress had lost its influence in the state following the emergence of ‘mandal’ and ‘kamandal’ politics in the 1990s and several caste groups shifted to Samajwadi Party, BSP and BJP. The party now believes it could gain from the acceptability of Rahul Gandhi who is espousing the social justice and anti-communal plank.
At the organisational level, the party is on an overdrive to sign in as many leaders as possible into the fold. Pande said by December, they plan to appoint 19.78 lakh office bearers – at state, district, block, mandal and booth levels – in a five-tier system.
While the appointment process in around 8,000 mandals is progressing, he said, the appointment of office bearers and Booth Level Agents in around 1.62 lakh booths are also in the offing.
Also as part of the organisation building exercise, the party has also decided to contest the MLC elections to 11 graduate and teachers seats as well as local body elections, which it sees as a “semifinal” for the 2027 polls. The plan is to fight all seats in 57,961 panchayats, 826 blocks and around 3,500 seats in 75 district panchayats.
“We have started the preparations. Training programmes are on,” Pande said.
The local body polls are not fought on political lines but parties see it as an opportunity to test their strength at the grassroots by fielding its leaders. The Congress has so far not given much importance to fighting the MLC elections or the local body elections, leaving the space open for rivals, including allies.
“This was a missing link. There were not many grassroots leaders in the party. We get local leaders through local body polls,” a senior leader said.
Also, the state Congress unit has started mapping localities to organise programmes. Data of places where weekly markets and ‘melas’ have been prepared at local level so that such localities can be targeted for organising programmes, the leader said adding, the party is also reaching out to families of freedom fighters.