Lucknow: The Congress is preparing to put up a massive show of support in Kanpur on Tuesday when party president Sonia Gandhi and her MP son Rahul make their first political foray into the heartland of Uttar Pradesh, the country's most politically consequential state.
So far the mother and son had confined their visits to their respective constituencies - Rae Bareli and Amethi - and refrained from venturing into the rest of the sprawling state where the party has been in political wilderness for more than 16 years after a four-decades-long monopoly rule.
The move is also seen in political circles as a precursor to a party declaration to entrust the reins of electioneering to Rahul Gandhi for the assembly polls scheduled early next year in the country's most populous state.
"This rally will sound the bugle for revival of the party in Uttar Pradesh," claimed state Congress general secretary Satya Deo Tripathi.
"You will witness a historic gathering at Phool Bagh grounds in Kanpur as Congress supporters would flock in from many areas around Kanpur," he added.
The party strategy is to also tap the large chunk of unemployed or badly under-employed workmen of Kanpur, which was once Uttar Pradesh's main industrial hub.
The fading out of its mainstay textile industry and a drastic cut in its market share of the leather industry had rendered tens of thousands unemployed over the years.
"We have major plans to create lots of new employment opportunities in the industrial town, where anti-workmen policies of non-Congress regimes have increased unemployment," Tripathi pointed out.
By raising hopes of creation of new employment opportunities, the Congress also intends to attack state Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has been currently spinning across the state giving away unemployment doles to educated youth.
The ruling Samajwadi Party has been proudly proclaiming itself as the pioneer for issuing unemployment doles in the state.
In order to shake party men out of their lethargy, the Congress leadership has declared that it would have a count of the crowds collected from different destinations.
"We will get video-graphs of all arrivals at the Kanpur rally, and the registration number of each vehicle would give us a rough count of arrivals from every place," disclosed the Congress general secretary.
The arrangement was being done as part of the party's plan to manage the internal dynamics of the organisation.
"The announcement had already propelled party leaders to muster up as much crowd as possible for the rally which would be a massive gathering," said Tripathi.
"Also a recording of the count of vehicles would dissuade anyone from making false claims about mustering up huge crowd from their respective areas of influence," he added.
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