Rahul to attend maiden UP Cong co-ordination committee meet

Lucknow, Oct 26 (UNI) AICC general secretary and Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi will attend the first meeting of the Uttar Pradesh Congress co-ordination committee in the state capital next month.

This would be for the first time that Mr Gandhi would step into the UP Congress headquarters, the building which was purchased by the party with the active involvement of his grandmother and late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

In order to boost party prospects in the state, congress President Sonia Gandhi had set up a 22-member co-ordination committee on October 16 and Mr Gandhi was included in the committee.

The committee is headed by UPCC president Rita Bahuguna Joshi and has among its members AICC General Secretaries Mohsina Kidwai and Janardan Dwivedi as also Union Minister Mahavir Prasad, former Chief Minister Ram Naresh Yadav and several former PCC presidents.

''Though the detailed agenda of November 12 meeting is not ready yet, it has been divided into two parts of organisation and programmes,'' Ms Joshi told reporters here today.

AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who is in-charge of Congress affairs in UP, is a special invitee in the committee along with party Secretary in-charge of the state.

Other members include Union Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, former PCC chiefs Arun Kumar Singh Munna and Jagdambika Pal, former CLP leader Pramod Tiwari, Union Minister Akhilesh Das and six AICC secretaries from UP -- Rajiv Shukla, Nirmal Khatri, Bhola Pandey, Jitin Prasad, Abdul Mannan and Vivek Bansal.

The Congress had fared poorly in the Assembly polls held earlier this year despite projecting Mr Gandhi as the 'face' of the party in the home state of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

The Congress has, for the last nearly two decades, been in political wilderness in the state, which was once its bastion.

UNI