Raj Babbar to take UP charge tomorrow

Newly-appointed Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar will take charge of his office alongwith top party leaders, including the Congress’ chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit, on Sunday in Lucknow.

The campaign committee chief for the UP polls, Dr Sanjjay Sinh, convenor Zafar Ali Naqvi and vice chairmen Jitin Prasad, Abdul Mannan Absari, Gayadin Anuragi, Bijendra Singh, besides senior UPCC vice presidents R.P.N. Singh, Rajaram Pal, Rajesh Mishra, Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary and Imran Masood will also be attending the event.

“This will be like a unity show,” party insiders said, adding that the AICC general secretary in-charge of UP, Ghulam Nabi Azad, is also expected to join them.

Mr Azad on Friday called a meeting of the newly-appointed office bearers, including five senior vice-presidents and campaign committee members, besides Mr Babbar and Ms Dikshit, at the AICC headquarters here in this regard.

These leaders and the coordination committee headed by Pramod Tiwari will address a meeting of the party workers in Lucknow on Sunday.

While Ms Dikshit has decided to function from Lucknow and will camp there till the polls, the party is optimistic that Mr Babbar could pull crowd across the state being a star.

Though the party is yet to clarify on how many seats of the total 403 it would contest on its own, its strategy is to make a dent at the BJP’s support base among upper castes with a calculation that a weakened saffron party cannot damage the vote bank of the BSP and the SP.

“The BJP cannot project it’s CM candidate because it will intensify factional fights in the party,” a Congress leader predicted while drawing attention to how the saffron party had avouided projecting its CM candidate in Bihar and earlier in Haryana and Maharashra.

“If they project a CM candidate from upper castes, then it would send our a wrong message to backward castes and vice-versa,” he said.

The BJP has won over 70 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 elections.