Cong’s mass contact programme a one-man show

Party leaders blamed it on bad planning: the programme was fixed without taking into account the winter session of Lok Sabha,where most of the top leaders are busy. In fact,among those appointed to oversee the campaign were five Union ministers,namely Salman Khurshid,R P N Singh,Jitin Prasada,Pradeep Jain Aditya and Sriprakash Jaiswal. While they made it a point to accompany Rahul last week,there has been no visible activity in the zones allotted to them.

“The date of the programme is yet to come. As soon as we get it,we will inform you about the details,” said Sudhir Tiwari,district president of Pilibhit which is part of the zone enstrusted to Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways R P N Singh.

Varanasi city Congress president Rais Ahmad said,“We are making preparations,candidates are holding meetings with workers,we shall start our programme in the first week of December and then senior leaders will come wherever they are required.”

A party leader,however,denied there was no activity. “P L Punia,who has been given charge of the campaign in Saharanpur and Meerut divisions,is meeting people in the region. Prasada has held two meetings,Jain has held four meetings,Jaiswal has also attended four meetings so far,” he said,but said he needed two days to give details.

State Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi,too,claimed that the Jan Sampark Abhiyan was proceeding well. “We have already organised 25 meetings” besides those addressed by Rahul,she said. Incidentally,Rahul addressed almost as many meetings: 24 to be precise.

Also,Joshi said 19 of the 25 meetings were held on the first day. Clearly,there has been much activity in the last 11 days.

Joshi said the programme was yet to pick up because “we are yet to announce our candidates in many places’’. Besides,some of the senior leaders were busy with the ongoing Parliament session,she said. The five Union ministers were given charge of two zones each. Later,the Saharanpur-Meerut zone was taken from Prasada and given to Punia,party MP and chairman of the National Commission of Scheduled Castes. Prasada now looks after the Aligarh-Agra zone.

R P N Singh was allotted Moradabad-Bareilly and Pillibhit-Sahjahanpur-Lucknow zones,Jaiswal was made in-charge of the zone covering Unnao,Kanpur,Lucknow and Rae Bareli districts along with Faizabad division and another zone covering Barabanki district along with Devipatan and Basti division. Khurshid was given charge of Gorakhpur-Azamgarh and Bhadohi-Varanasi zones. Jain was made in-charge of the Allahabad-Sonbhadra-Mirzapur zone and another covering Jhansi and Kanpur divisions.

In order to ensure that there are no complaints of bias,the ministers were allotted areas away from their own Lok Sabha constituencies. Besides,each zone has an AICC observer and two PCC co-ordinators for the purpose of monitoring and co-ordinating the programmes. The AICC observers have also been given an office in each zone to facilitate their work.