LUCKNOW, FEB 21: Congress president Sonia Gandhi today provided the much-needed moral booster to party leaders attempting to regain old political status in the Hindi heartland by indicating that the party was now ready to occupy the secular space in the region.``Some secular parties in Uttar Pradesh are fearful of the growing political status of the Congress and have targeted us. The more we will be made the target by these parties the better it will be for the party,'' she said while addressing her maiden public meeting in the state capital on Sunday afternoon.Her calculated diatribe against the secular parties was aimed at the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in context to UP and was also indicative of the fact that the Congress is now preparing to take the BJP head on while these parties are being pushed to third and fourth positions.The onus now is on the state leaders of the Congress for taking the party to its status of old political class in Uttar Pradesh which sends maximum number ofMPs (85) to the Lok Sabha. But going by the prevailing groupism in the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) which is divided on camps of the present incumbent Salman Khursheed and his predecessor Jitendra Prasada, the task appears to be an arduous one.The response from the people, however, has been encouraging regardless of the factionalism in the party. It was for the first time since 1989 when the Congress was pushed to oblivion that people took a Congress leader seriously. They thronged to the Begum Hazrat Mahal Park and listened to the 20-minute address of Sonia with rapt attention. The crowd also had the Muslims, who totally rejected the party after demolition of the Babri mosque. Their presence was a good sign for the Congress and also was an alarm for the Samajwadi Party which had been the only beneficiary of their formidable votebank in the post-Babri period.On her part Sonia too had tried to assuage their sentiments when she without naming the BJP said religion had become a part of theirpolitics to keep people with you. ``You were also present and ebullient when religious structures (read Babri) were being razed to the ground. But we are proud of being secular and will fight for ensuring rights of all communities,'' she said.Taking a dig at the Vajpayee Government, she said in the present regime members of minority communities and Dalits were being attacked while the government had also totally failed on putting a check on deteriorating law and order and also could do nothing to arrest spiralling prices of essential commodities.In what was a direct attack on attempts being made to regroup the shattered third front and coalition government of the BJP, she said, ``people are now fed up with unstable and opportunist alliances and want a stable government with clear policies and programmes and protection of rights of women and members of minority communities''.The message which the party leaders were wanting to give through the first public meeting of their national leader was loud andclear. A good gathering at the venue of the meeting and participation of all sections of the society had made it clear that the Congress bandwagon is ready to chug off provided the party leaders in the state work in unison. The failure of which would deprive them of perhaps the last chance to re-establish the party in the Hindi heartland.
