NEW DELHI:The Congress in Uttar Pradesh is gearing up for the Panchayat polls in the state with senior party leaders being assigned zones and districts to look after. The state is being divided into six zones for proper handling of the polls.
Congress General Secretary in-charge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra deliberated upon the issue in a recent meeting with senior party leaders and party policy group.
Congress state President Ajay Kumar Lallu, who was present at the meeting told IANS, "The process of identifying candidates will be initiated soon as we have a committee already working on it to prepare a roadmap for the elections."
According to sources in the party, the state is being divided into six zones. Each zone will be given to a senior leader to oversee the Panchayat elections, right from identifying candidates to contesting the elections. A task force has been set up for the Panchayat polls.
The three-layer Panchayat polls are slated to be held this year, but may be extended due to the ongoing pandemic. The party is planning to contest the urban local body elections as well but those are still far away.
The tenure of the Panchayats is ending in December this year and the Congress party is preparing for the polls accordingly. In the last polls, the party had won around 145 wards from the around 1, 825 wards in 75 districts.
Uttar Pradesh has also seen a rise in crimes with the latest incident of the killing of 8 police personnel by criminals, and Priyanka Gandhi termed it "jungle raj" during a video conference with party leaders on Saturday last week, and asked the party leaders to expose the BJP. The virtual meeting was called to discuss what the Congress called the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.
During the meeting, Priyanka said, "Uttar Pradesh has turned into a jungle raj. Even police personnel are not safe here. The law and order in the state has collapsed because of the alliance between criminals, ruling party leaders and officials." She said that the morale of criminals has been boosted in the state.
Priyanka and other party leaders have been aggressively pushing issues to target the Yogi Adityanath government.