Assembly polls: Rahul Gandhi to be Congress star campaigner

New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Chief Ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Prithviraj Chavan and the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad would be the party’s star campaigners in the upcoming Assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir.

While Priyanka Gan-dhi is unlikely to campaign as the party does not want to use this card in Assembly polls since it is reserved for the LS polls, it is unclear whether ex PM Manmohan Singh will address select meetings, especially in Mumbai and Srinagar.

Mr Gandhi has been addressing poll meetings more than the Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, as seen in the Lok Sabha polls and earlier in UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and other states. The party does not want to debate on whether the Gandhi scion is a vote catcher, charismatic for the simple reason that the Congress does not have leaders who are crowd pullers at the state level.

This will be the first battle after the LS polls which would see whether Narendra Modi would be a factor or it will be fought on local issues by local leaders.