Ahead of roadshow, Sonia Gandhi Gandhi will first offer prayers at famous Kashi Vishwanath Temple.
Highlights
- Sonia Gandhi's Varanasi roadshow will begin from Kachahari at noon.
- It will cover a distance of around eight kilometers in three hours.
- Party's chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit, others to take part.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi will take the battle for Uttar Pradesh straight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency with her mega roadshow in Varanasi today.
Ahead of kicking off the Congress poll campaign for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Mrs Gandhi, 69, will first offer prayers at the famous Kashi Vishwanath Temple.
The Congress has lined up a massive roadshow in which UP Congress chief Raj Babbar and senior leaders such as Ghulam Nabi Azad and Salman Khurshid will take part, said the party's chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit on Monday.
The roadshow will begin from Kachahari at noon after party leaders garland the statue of BR Ambedkar and will cover a distance of around eight kilometers in three hours.
It will conclude at Englishiyaline where Mrs Gandhi is expected to deliver a short speech and garland the statue of former Union Minister and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister late Kamlapati Tripathi.
Maintaining that the roadshow is a part of the party's '27 saal, UP Behaal' campaign, Mrs Dikshit launched an attack on the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) in the state for the recent Bulandshahr gang-rape incident.
"Law and order in the state under the SP has worsened and the recent incident of Bulandshahr was highly condemnable," she said, adding that the Congress wants to rid the state of "SP, BSP and BJP misrule of the last 27 years" and put it on the path towards development.
Mrs Dikshit claimed the development of Uttar Pradesh was visible 27 years ago when the Congress was in power in the state but subsequent governments led by the SP, BSP and BJP "misruled by playing out religion and caste-based politics".
Newly-appointed Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar claimed the party was confident of forming the government in the state in 2017.
Defending Mrs Dikshit's selection as the party's chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh, he attacked the BJP saying, "The Congress gives respect to its elder members, unlike another party that sidelines them."