First encounter

RANCHI, January 20: Morabadi Maidan, the next stop in Sonia Gandhi's campaign tour, will also be the first to witness both Sonia and Congres...

RANCHI, January 20: Morabadi Maidan, the next stop in Sonia Gandhi’s campaign tour, will also be the first to witness both Sonia and Congress president Sitaram Kesri on one platform. Both will jointly address the election meeting here tomorrow, to be attended by all the top Congress leaders in the state.

Cut-outs of Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, B R Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi tower over the venue with all the main roads leading to it decorated with welcome arches. Supervising the arrangements are top Congress leaders including Bihar Pradesh Committee President Sarfaraz Ahmad, Rajya Sabha MP Gyanranjan, AICC member and former minister Subodh Kant Sahay, all of whom incidentally lead and represent different factions within the party.

Most of them are separately conducting mass contact drives in the form of street plays and meetings in the neighbourhood as well as in nearby villages and have despatched party workers far and wide to mobilise crowds for the meeting.

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At a series of meetings and workers’ meets organised at Congress Bhawan here last week, the leaders, speaking jointly, stressed the need for unity and criticised the BJP-VHP-RSS combine for "trying to divide the society on communal lines". They lauded Sonia Gandhi and claimed she had refurbished the sagging morale of the party’s rank and file by agreeing to campaign for the Congress.

The call for unity notwithstanding, a race is on to secure party tickets for themselves or for their followers. While Sarfaraz Ahmad wants former party MLA Indranath Bhagat to contest the polls from Lohardaga, Sahay is trying to win a ticket for the Ranchi seat and Gyanranjan is out to acquire the same two seats for his supporters R K Dhan and Kamlesh Mahato respectively.

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