Priyanka's main focus is 2022 UP assembly elections

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday revealed she was eyeing the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh much more than the 2019 general elections just weeks ahead of the first phase of polling.

At a programme organised by party workers at the AH inter college in Amethi, the parliamentary constituency of her brother and party President Rahul Gandhi, she took Congress workers by surprise when she asked them if they were preparing for the 2022 assembly elections.

"Are you preparing for elections... I am not talking about 2019, but 2022," she asked a worker who was greeting her at the function organised by the Congress cadre in the Gandhi bastion of Amethi, where Priyanka was on her day-long visit during her three-day programme in the state.

When she was appointed party General Secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi had said that he had sent his sister to the state with a larger plan.

"She hasn't been sent here for four months, she has been sent here with a larger plan... We will not only defeat BJP in 2019 but also win 2022 elections," Rahul Gandhi had told reporters here on January 23.

In several speeches following that in Amethi he had reiterated the point.

Her comments on Thursday was yet another disclosure of the party's plan in the state.

In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Congress had lost all the five assembly constituencies in Amethi. The BJP had won four while one seat was won by the Samajwadi Party.

With Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in an official role, the party is eyeing a major share of seats in the assembly elections in the state where it has been out of power since 1991.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Priyanka reached Amethi during the second leg of her campaign and held a marathon 11-hour meeting with party workers at the college campus. She first held the meeting for over five and half hours and then returned for another round of meeting which lasted for over four hours.

She held discussions with the party's booth workers till 12.30 a.m.

Later on Thursday, she is scheduled to meet the workers and leaders of her mother's constituency, Rae Bareli.

She will then go to Ayodhya on Friday, where the party workers have also planned an eight-km long road show.

(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)

--IANS

aks/am/in