Priyanka Gandhi holds one-on-one meetings with UP leaders

Three days after holding a meeting on poll performance in Uttar Pradesh, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi has initiated one-on-one meetings with prominent leaders from the state to analyse electoral performance and the way forward.

Sources said she held discussions with former UP president Ajay Kumar Lallu, Pramod Tewari, Acharya Pramod Krishnan, Satish Ajmani, Ajay Rai and Veerenda Chaudhary.

The one-on-one meetings came days after Priyanka held a meeting with prominent UP leaders to analyse Congress results in the state.

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Congress managed to win only two seats with a vote share of 2.33% while in 2017, the party had won seven seats with a vote share of 6.25%.

Under Priyanka's initiative, the party had fielded women in 40% of the seats it contested, a move that attracted criticism within the party, claiming that it had an impact on the party's vote share.

G-23 leaders had criticised the leadership for taking "unilateral" decisions like earmarking 40% seats for women in UP without wider consultations at the national level.

Senior UP leaders like Lallu, PL Punia and Rajiv Shukla attended the meeting chaired by Priyanka in Delhi on Tuesday. After the meeting on UP affairs, Congress spokesperson Supriya Srinate told reporters that Priyanka took responsibility for the party's performance in the state.

Srinate said the results provided the party with new challenges as well as new hope. "Priyanka Gandhi has started work on the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. There will be organisational changes so that we will be able to effectively fight the 2024 polls. The organisation will be strengthened," she had said referring to the decisions of the meeting.

Amid the leadership facing criticism over the functioning of the party and poll debacle, there have been several actions taken by the leadership.

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The party has initiated a reorganisation of state units in UP, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur by asking state presidents, including Lallu, to resign besides appointing five leaders to assess poll results and suggest organisational changes after consulting regional leaders.

Party president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday night appointed Rajani Patil (Goa), Jairam Ramesh (Manipur), Ajay Maken (Punjab), Jitendra Singh (Uttar Pradesh) and Avinash Pande (Uttarakhand).

Except for Ramesh, who was Manipur Special Observer, all others were Screening Committee Chairpersons. There has been criticism over the choice of leaders, saying they were part of the decision-making process prior to the elections and they were not the right ones to do the assessment.

Maken's new assignment also showed that Congress has not given much credence to allegations by some party leaders that the Delhi leader sold party tickets. Some of the MPs made the allegation even before Sonia during a meeting she had with Punjab lawmakers on Wednesday.

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