UP Congress releases first list of 125 candidates

Amid high political activities.Congress on Thursday released its first list  of candidates for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at a virtual meeting that out of the total 125 candidates, 40 per cent are women and 40 per cent are youth. With this historic initiative, we hope to bring in a new kind of politics in the state. There are 50 women candidates in the list, including the mother of Unnao rape victim, said Vadra. “From Shahjahanpur, we have fielded Asha worker Poonam Pandey who led an agitation for a raise in honorarium,” she added. "Our aim is to strengthen our party and for our candidates to fight on people's issues. We will not indulge in a negative campaign. Our campaign will be about development and the progress of Dalits and backwards," she said.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the BJP had wronged "Unnao's daughter". "Now, she [the rape survivor's mother] will be the face of justice," he tweeted. Vadra also released the party’s manifesto last month. The Congress party has been out of power in Uttar Pradesh for nearly three decades and Vadra has been desperately trying to change that.  In the 2017 UP elections, the BJP bagged 312 seats while the SP bagged 47 seats, BSP won 19 and Congress could win only seven seats. The rest of the seats were bagged by other candidates. Congress had contested the 2017 polls in alliance with the SP.