U.P. Congress on the trail of Sanjay Gandhi’s aides

Celebrity poll strategist Prashant Kishor has instructed the Congress leadership in Uttar Pradesh to bring him a list office-bearers and workers who worked closely with the firebrand leader Sanjay Gandhi in the mid-1970s.

Mr. Kishor had a meeting on April 21 with key office bearers of the party’s frontal organisations — the Indian Youth Congress, the Sewa Dal and the Mahilla Congress.

Mr. Kishor asked them to find out legislators, councillors and workers who were associated with the party between mid-1970s and the 1980s when the Congress ruled the State.

What made Sanjay tick?

A senior office-bearer of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) who was present at the meeting told The Hindu that Mr. Kishor believed that the older generation in Uttar Pradesh admired Sanjay Gandhi and the people who worked with him during the campaigns would “always be Congress by heart.”

“He [Kishor] told us to find such people and share the lists with his team… He has already sent his teams to meet some of them. This way he will figure out what made Sanjay Gandhi’s campaigns successful in U.P. and also why our leaders abandoned us.”

Strategy wise, the move appears to be one of Mr. Kishor’s first major efforts to reverse decades of Congress’s declining vote share in U.P.

Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary, chairman of Congress party’s ST/SC cell in Ghaziabad, told The Hindu that he had already identified a “few dozen” people who broke away from the party for one reason or the other in the last two decades.

Back in the game

Mr. Chaudhary said Mr. Kishor had helped change the perception that the Congress had given up in U.P.

“The belief was that Congress men were aware that they can’t beat BSP and SP. But ask anyone about us in U.P. today and you will hear that Congress is serious this time… that Congress is going to put up a tough fight.”

Madhusudhan Mistry, the party’s general secretary in charge of U.P., confirmed that the former leaders and workers were being contacted by Mr. Kishor’s team. But he said in the same breath that he did not know whether the outreach was aimed at those who had worked in Sanjay Gandhi’s time.