Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

The Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi seems to have taken the election campaign quite seriously, making the party’s presence be felt in one state after the other.

Rahul had begun with the election campaign for the Lok Sabha elections due in 2019, from Gujarat which also soon going to be poll-bound holding the state assembly elections due in Dec this year. After Gujarat, Rahul hit Uttar Pradesh, visiting his parliamentary constituency, Amethi, for the first time after Yogi Adityanath assumed office as the Chief Minister.

The Congress leader is currently on a three day trip to Amethi which will conclude on Friday. Following the UP trip, Himachal Pradesh is the next state that he will target. He will launch the party’s election campaign in the state from Saturday. Significantly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also recently visited the state to lay the foundation of the AIIMS.

Himachal Pradesh will also be holding the state assembly elections in Dec this year, like Gujarat.

During his visit to the state, Rahul will be facing the major challenge of bringing the two warring factions of the state unit together on stage. It is being speculated that the Congress leader is likely to end the tussle going on between the Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and state unit chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. The CM has been demanding that Sukhvinder be removed from the post, however, it is believed that during the visit of Rahul both the leaders will be sharing the stage for the first time.

Rahul is expected to land in Mandi and hold a rally at the Paddal ground. According to the Congress members, the reason for choosing Mandi as the venue to the hold the rally was that one, it was represented by the CM’s wife Pratibha Singh and it was also the largest town in the area. Secondly, Mandi being the heart centre of Himachal Pradesh has always been hosting the Congress leader for all the elections.

As per the party sources, the Congress senior leaders have been able to find a solution to the prevailing issues between the Chief Minister and the State unit chief. This was majorlu=y agreed upon keeping in mind the party’s prospects ahead of the polls.

Virbhadra Singh had held a meeting with Rahul Gandhi last week and during the meeting, it was decided that the opinions of the chief minister in the appointments to more than half-dozen party committees, including panels to decide campaign, manifesto, media and candidate selection, will be given priority.

Ahead of the visit of Rahul Gandhi the party is planning to launch a massive social media campaign announcing his arrival. It is also being said that just a day before the arrival of Rahul, the social media department will unleash new hashtags on networking site Twitter flagging Congress’ achievements in Himachal Pradesh under Virbhadra Singh.

The social media department of Himachal Pradesh has also deputed more people and have directed them to visit the state and work closely with the state unit to understand the election issues.