Khatri asks Congmen to sweat it out, instead of burning effigies

Nirmal Khatri, the new Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president, started his innings today by appointing eight zonal presidents, each of whom will look after about 10 Lok Sabha constituencies. And his first advise to partymen was: "Sweat it out in the field, rather than giving bytes on television, and burning effigies for the camera."

The leaders who will assist him "are not observers, or zonal in-charges, but presidents," said Khatri. They have been appointed because UP is a vast state, which can't be managed by one man.

In his one-hour long speech at the party office, Khatri stressed the need of hard work by partymen. He said the hard work done by Rahul Gandhi during the Assembly elections in UP will bear results in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections — just as the hard work done during the 2007 Assembly elections paid in the 2009 Lok Sabha election.

Calling the reports of Rahul's failure in UP as "half-truth", Khatri said, "Since the time I have been made the state president, everyone is asking me why Rahul failed to convert the crowds into votes in UP. The fact is that our vote share increased by 3 per cent in the Assembly elections this year. In fact, the vote share of only the Congress and the SP increased, whereas the BJP and BSP lost their share."

"In any case, the leader cannot be blamed for failure to convert crowds into votes; we failed because we could not show our strength," he added.

The new president said that the eight zonal presidents will have all powers in their zones, which will be allocated soon. They will have their offices in the zones and their first task would be reorganisation of the party.

The eight zonal presidents are Rashid Masood, P L Punia, Brijendra Singh, Raja Ram Pal, Jitin Prasada, Anugrah Narayan Singh, Vivek Singh, and RPN Singh.

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