Raj Babbar Appointed UP Congress Chief
NEW DELHI: Actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar has been given charge of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh as the state unit chief ahead of crucial assembly elections to be held early next year.Mr Babbar is a Congress spokesperson and represents Uttarakhand in the Rajya Sabha. He was earlier a member of the Samajwadi Party and joined the Congress some years ago, famously defeating Dimple Yadav, the wife of UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, in a by poll in 2009.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Congress leader in charge of UP, announced Mr Babbar’s announcement rejecting suggestions that he is an “outsider.””Raj Babbar was born in UP and has been a member of Parliament from UP in both houses a number of times,” Mr Azad pointed out, ruling out any more announcements today on UP.
There had been speculation that the Congress would announce a lead role in the UP campaign for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, after her hour-long meeting with Mr Azad at his residence this afternoon, but that was not to be.Priyanka Gandhi, 44, has in many elections so far campaigned only in Rae Bareli and Amethi, the parliamentary constituencies in UP of her mother Congress president Sonia Gandhi and brother, Rahul Gandhi, who is the party’s vice president.
The Uttar Pradesh election is a high-stakes contest with parties looking at the result as a key indicator of how they could fare in the 2019 national elections.For the Congress that means lifting itself out of a political low in the state and it has sought the help of master election strategist Prashant Kishor, who is credited with constructing winning campaigns for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 national election and Bihar’s Nitish Kumar in state elections last year.
