Top Congress leaders including AICC general secretary Madhavrao Scindia, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee Chief Prataprao Bhosale, Sushilkumar Shinde, Shankarrao Chavan, Anantrao Thopte and Ramakrishna More among others will attend the rally.

Joshi appealed to all the district party workers to remain present and added that Nationalist Congress Party set up by Sharad Pawar would not affect the Congress. The party workers on the other hand are all set to step up the electoral campaign with a renewed vigour.

Congress city unit chief expressed confidence that following the merger, Congress would again come back to power in the Pune Municipal Corporation. He also assured not to neglect the loyal workers whohad not deserted the party.

Meanwhile, it was reliably learnt that a meeting of Congressmen to select the party leader in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had been called off on Sunday. A separate group of All India Congress (B) was formed in the PMC by 11 corporators supporting Sharad Pawar. With Ulhas Dhole Patil - who was the party leader in the PMC - now part of the new group, the post has become vacant.

Even as the Congress corporators are rather miffed about Suresh Kalmadi's return to the Congress, moves were afoot among the Congressmen to select their own man to the party leader's post in the PMC before the June 2 merger with MVA. They fear that Kalmadi would exercise his influence and pick his own man from the MVA group to represent the Congress party leader's post in the PMC.