Priyanka kick-starts election campaign in Lucknow, meets party workers

Lucknow: Congress General Secretary of UP (East) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Sunday arrived in Lucknow to address the party workers ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress general secretary scheduled a meeting with a number of delegations who have been holding demonstrations against the BJP government and also interact with people to take feedback about the implementation of various programmes.

Priyanka, is on a four-day visit in the state where the Congress leader will take a 3-day boat ride on a 140-kilometre long ‘ganga-yatra’ starting from Prayagraj and Mirzapur districts on Monday. This is her second visit after being appointed the party's general secretary.

She will end the trip in Varanasi on Wednesday, which is known as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency, a day before the festival of Holi.

During Priyanka Gandhi’s streamer campaign, she also planned to halt at various temples and dargahs.

The Congress leader would also interact with electorally significant communities who live by the river. Many of these communities come under the other backward castes or scheduled castes groupings and together they make up a good chunk of the electorate, said Congress party.

She will also meet the family members of a CRPF jawan killed in Pulwama terror attack.

On Saturday, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath claimed that Priyanka Gandhi’s entry into politics will make “no difference” to the BJP’s prospects in the Lok Sabha polls. He also dismissed the SP-BSP alliance calling it a “false alarm” and stated that it was already embroiled in a dispute.