Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi, March 20: Rahul Gandhi’s agenda to shift Uttar Pradesh politics out of Delhi has produced the unthinkable — the state Congress will hold its first meeting in 26 years in Kanpur on March 30 and 31.

Sonia and Rahul Gandhi — whose political careers are anchored in the state — are among the 1,200 delegates expected to take part in the conclave.

The mother-son duo will also address a public rally in Kanpur on March 31.

Party sources claimed the conclave would be a freewheeling session without a pre-determined schedule. It would also be open to the media, the sources added.

“Congress members, who felt stifled all these years, will be encouraged to speak freely and frankly. At least that’s our hope,” said Akhilesh Prasad Singh, the spokesperson for the Uttar Pradesh Congress.

The sources said Rahul, whose Lok Sabha seat is Amethi, was determined not to let affairs of Uttar Pradesh be “remote-controlled” from 24, Akbar Road, the Congress headquarters in Delhi.

They said Rahul feels that one reason for the Congress’s decline in the heartland was that leaders had cut themselves off from “vital” sources of inputs — the grassroots — and had come to depend on a cabal, which made access to the “high command” impossible for others.

“When Rahul speaks of democracy in the party apparatus, this is what he means. Everyone should be heard out,” said a source.

The sources said he did not want to “box” the Congress in at Amethi and Rae Bareli, his mother’s constituency. As a state office-bearer put it, Rahul wants to demonstrate that the party was “still alive, even if it wasn’t kicking”, in Uttar Pradesh.

This was why Rahul had spread himself out and “enlarged his concerns”.

Party insiders said Rahul, after taking the plunge in Uttar Pradesh politics, had taken up a gamut of issues: from raising the demand for a separate Bundelkhand state to asking the state government to remove the value-added tax on shoes made by small manufacturers in Agra.

Last week, when members of a Dalit family were killed in Etawah, Rahul did a quick spot-check.