Rahul hand-picks four young guns for Uttar Pradesh polls

Four young candidates in the first list of Congress nominees for the coming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections have been hand-picked by Rahul Gandhi, a Congress general secretary and son of party president Sonia Gandhi.

Seventy-three candidates were named in the first list, released more than two weeks ago. If the first list is any indication of things to come, insiders say, more young guns would find place in the three more lists for the polls, scheduled next year. The four Youth Congress members who have been named in the first list are Pankaj Malik from Shamli, Amit Jaiswal from Akbarpur, Sarvesh Kumar from Gopamau and Rajesh Gautam from Kadipur assembly seats. Gopamau and Kadipur are reserved for SC candidates.

Says an insider, “This time around, Youth Congress officials were formally asked to give the names of candidates based on their performances in the past two years in the Youth Congress.”

While building up the party’s youth wing, Rahul Gandhi has been monitoring the performance of Youth Congress leaders, based on the monthly reports prepared to assess the performance of office-bearers.

Malik, a former vice-president of the Youth Congress and the current sitting MLA from Bagra, was one of the young leaders personally selected by Gandhi in 2007 to contest selection in the face of strong opposition. He justified the trust reposed in him and this time when Bagra got subsumed due to delimitation, he has been chosen for the Shamli seat.

Freshers, too, will make their debut in the coming polls. Gautam, a Dalit, was the unanimous choice for Kadipur in Sultanpur district. “Although its is not intrinsically a Congress seat now, we are confident of bagging it, as we have a strong candidate in Gautam,” says Virender Rathore, general secretary of the Youth Congress in charge of UP.

Sarvesh Kumar ‘Jansewa’ also representing a reserved seat comes from a non-political background. He is known to be a strong organisational worker, and is currently the Youth Congress assembly president.

Jaiswal is another debutant, and has been fielded from Akbarpur, which is a non-Congress seat.

According to senior party leaders, the Youth Congress leadership that has largely emerged on Tuesday has come as a result of ‘talent search’ organised by Rahul in UP as early as in 2008. Gandhi had then personally hand-picked those he felt had the potential to be the future leaders. Malik was one among the chosen 22.