Ghulam Nabi Azad, general secretary of All India Congress Committee, who is also incharge of the Party affairs here in Uttar Pradesh, along with state president Raj Babbar, faces embarrassing situation when workers and the leaders showed their resentment openly before them. Not only this, the annoyance of the workers also come out in open as a majority of leaders who were supposed to attend the meeting here on Saturday had not turned up.
Sources said that during the meeting of leaders and workers belonging to Lucknow Division has been called by Azad and Babbar here at Party’s state head-quarter on Saturday. Besides Azad and Babbar, all other senior leaders of the State including Pramod Tewari, Sanjay Singh, PL Punia, all MPs were present on the dais when Babbar started taking names of the leaders and workers asking them to come on stage and share their suggestion on how to strengthen the Party till booth level so a better performance could be ensured in the next Parliament elections scheduled to take place early next year. However, much to embarrassment of Azad and Babbar, majority of the leaders were found to have not turned up at the venue.
When Babbar questioned the district and city chiefs of the Congress of the districts coming in Lucknow division as well as the Organising Committee of his own office that why most of the leaders were missing from the venue, he found that even those responsible for inviting the leaders are either too missing or had slipped from the venue to avoid query.
Sources further said that the senior Congress leaders faced further embarrassment when some district leaders came up and raised their finger over working of UPCC chief. One of the leader said that he had made a workers team in his area but one day, he brought one of the worker to UPCC office and much to his surprise, he found his name on UPCC secretary list just on the next evening. The leader said that now he fear of bringing the workers to UPCC office as he apprehend that if he do so then soon he had no workers as everyone will be made UPCC office bearer. Another leader targeted Babbar claiming that no leader now remained in his (Babbar) team in UPCC who had any following or could contribute in strengthening the Party. Some leaders also highlighted that how Babbar had brought some blue eyes boys in his core team in the UPCC. It may be mentioned here that this core team comes under controversy when charged were made on them for selling tickets of corporators and nagarpalika’s elections.
Addressing about 50 of the workers and leaders who turned up in Saturday’s meeting Azad said that he was surprised that just four days back, a similar meeting of Meerut region was held in Ghaziabad in which several hundred workers attended and had also come up with valuable solutions to strengthen the Party. He warned the leaders of the Lucknow Division that from the next time, they must ensured that all the leaders, which included winners and runners of of corporator, nagar palika elections, leaders of all frontal and other units of the Party etc must be called for the meeting. He also appealed the leaders, to call all those independents who won or performed good in the said elections so that Party could be strengthened.