LUCKNOW: While the chairman of Congress Pradesh Election Committee (PEC) Salman Khurshid reiterated a well-known fact that Congress would contest upcoming 2022 UP polls under the leadership of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the AICC general secretary herself challenged the ruling BJP saying that only time would tell which party -- Congress or the BJP -- had lost existence in countries politically most crucial state.
Priyanka, who is touring Raebareli, her mother Sonia Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency and the lost bastion of Amethi, was responding to UP deputy CM Keshav Maurya’s claim that state had got rid of Congress.
Priyanka, who has been in Uttar Pradesh since September 10, reviewed the Congress party’s organizational readiness and its strategy for the assembly election early next year. She said that preparations for the high-octane polls were in full swing.
Meanwhile, making it clear that Congress would not stitch an alliance and that the party would go it alone in UP polls, PEC chairman and former Union minister Salman Khurshid said that the Congress had not decided on its chief ministerial candidate yet but it would field candidates for all 403 assembly seats in UP.
Khurshid, who was in Agra to gather people’s feedback for the party manifesto, stressed that it would include voices of the common people by visiting assembly constituencies to get a sense of the problems being faced by the locals.
“This would make people happy and they can say that this manifesto is their own," said the Congress leader.
"We have visited other districts such as Ayodhya, Jhansi, Gorakhpur, etc and on Sunday in Agra, interacted with the natives of Tora village. People complained about several issues such as pension for widows and old people," Salman Khurshid said.