Rahul: Strategy ready

New Delhi, Nov. 20: The Congress has worked out a long-term plan for revival in Uttar Pradesh, a state that senior leaders claim is showing signs of fatigue with caste and communal politics.

Although the Congress has so far done little to regain ground in the politically crucial state despite being in power at the Centre, Rahul Gandhi has now placed Uttar Pradesh on top of his agenda.

Sources said Rahul was in the process of dividing the state into 10 electoral zones, each with one All India Congress Committee (AICC) observer who will study every constituency in his area and report to the high command by October 2010.

The purpose is to identify the best potential candidates and issues in each region, as well as the party’s weaknesses and strengths which can then be addressed in advance. The Congress will then name its candidates for all the 402 seats at least a year before the 2012 Assembly polls.

The Congress, however, has witnessed fierce churning in the past on the issue of early announcement of candidates, and has invariably ended up releasing the list just days before the filing of nominations closed.

A party panel headed by A.K. Antony too had suggested early declaration of candidates but the dominant view in the Congress was that the experiment would be fraught with risks. The other aspirants in the constituency might defect, and even the selected candidate might come under pressure to keep everybody happy — a task that also involves huge expenses.

Rahul, however, believes that early selection will be advantageous in a state where the party has few powerful claimants.

The Amethi MP had divided the state into eight electoral zones before the previous Assembly elections and appointed a head for each. But that experiment had failed because it created a multiplicity of authorities without any mechanism for work on the ground.

The zonal heads, all senior leaders from the state, quarrelled with one another and undermined the authority of the state unit president. The new arrangement will require observers to assessing the ground realities.

Senior leaders admit the party organisation was in bad shape in 2007 and there was no unity among state leaders. But they think the new experiment can yield results, primarily because of the solid work done on the ground by Rahul.

“Rahul has generated much goodwill about the Congress in the recent months. While the poor are convinced of his good intentions, the Muslims have started a decisive shift towards the Congress. The upper caste voters are showing a general fatigue with the likes of the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the BJP who have dominated the political scene for almost two decades. Everybody is yearning for change,” an AICC official claimed.

The Congress believes that Rahul has succeeded in creating a new, pan-Indian voter who will not vote for caste or religion. This voter, the party thinks, will give Rahul a chance. Most senior leaders agree, though, that a lot of ground is still to be covered and that other party leaders need to follow Rahul’s example and reach out to this new voter.