After the debacle in UP Assembly election,it seems the Congress party has decided to correct the mistakes made in Congress president Sonia Gandhis constituency,Rae Bareli. Two significant steps were taken by the party last week. The first is the active participation of Priyanka Gandhi in Rae Bareli about a year and a half before the next Lok Sabha election. The second is merging Sonia Gandhis office as MP with the district Congress office of Rae Bareli for better coordination in the organisation. On August 1,Priyanka held a meeting in Delhi with district Congress president of Rae Bareli Umashankar Mishra,city Congress president of Rae Bareli Raghvendra Pratap Singh and four former party MLAs from the region Raja Ram,Shiv Ganesh Lodhi,Ashok Kumar Singh and Ajay Pal all of whom lost in the Assembly election. Sources said Priyanka asked the local leaders about required changes in the working of the party in order to strengthen its base in the area. Priyanka also asked the leaders to prepare a development report with a list of works that need to be taken up in their respective areas,and submit it before August 8 to Sonias office in Delhi. The same day,another meeting has been called by Priyanka and this time Pradesh Congress Committee members and block presidents of the party from Rae Bareli have been asked to attend. We told her that in order to get back the faith of the people,we need separate meetings on development issues with the personal issues of the local leaders from the region. She gave us about half-an-hour and promised to continue such interactions on Wednesdays in Delhi. She asked us to prepare a development plan for our regions,which we will soon be sending, said a leader from Rae Bareli. Priyanka,who handled Sonias campaign in Rae Bareli and Rahuls campaign in Amethi in the past few elections,had to face a hard time,especially in her mothers constituency,while campaigning during the last Assembly election. Party workers as well as the public questioned her last-minute arrival before the election and expressed unhappiness over her absence for three years after the Lok Sabha election in 2009. In Rae Bareli,the party could not win a single seat. All four sitting MLAs lost. During the election campaign,Priyanka was told that the MLAs did not work for five years and her campaigning was not going to change anything. Priyanka had admitted in one of the public meetings in Tiloi that she was like a barsati medhak who visits the region occasionally but had promised that her brother Rahul was not like that. The organisation was being blamed for the loss of the party,so we clearly told Priyanka that the organisation had no role in initiating local development work. All applications for development works were being handled from Pandey Kothi Sonias MP office which had no coordination with the district unit. Thus,rather than coming to the party office,everyone preferred to visit Pandey Kothi, said a senior party leader from the district.
