Rahul Gandhi to visit Mumbai, after 21-month break

Mumbai, Jan 14: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will on Thursday arrive here on his first visit to the city in 21 months, party officials said.

He will be here for two days, starting Thursday. The scenario is quite different as the last Lok Sabha and assembly elections saw the rout of the Congress in Maharashtra where it was relegated to the third position.

This is also the first time he will visit the city when an aggressive youth leader, Sanjay Nirupam, is heading the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee.

During Rahul's long stay away since his election rally on April 20, 2014, at the BKC Grounds, the Congress lost senior and experienced leaders like Abdul Rehman Antulay and Murli Deora, among others, who exercised tremendous influence on all factions and groups within the party.

Announcing the schedule, Nirupam said Gandhi will address a party workers' meet at 2 p.m. on Friday in Malad suburb of north-west Mumbai in the presence of AICC general secretary in-charge of the party's affairs in Maharashtra Mohan Prakash and Maharashtra Pradesh Congress chief Ashok Chavan.

Later, he will go to the Mumbai Congress office and inaugurate the Murli Deora Hall and meet and address party workers in the presence of AICC general secretary Gurudas Kamat.

On Saturday, Gandhi will travel back to the suburbs and interact with management students of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Juhu-Vile Parle.

Nirupam added that after this, Gandhi will embark on a road march (padyatra) along with hundreds of Congress workers from the posh upmarket Bandra to the wretched slums of Dharavi.

IANS