Rahul's GenNext team to micro-manage polls

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi has formed a special team of young leaders to micro-manage the elections in UP. Aurangzeb Naqshbandi reports. Strategy

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi has formed a special team of young leaders to micro-manage the elections in UP.

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The Gen Next leaders, including 13 first-time MLAs from Assam, West Bengal and Rajasthan, will assist the party candidates, mainly the first-timers, in managing the election process by organising booths and supervising polling centres, apart from monitoring their campaigns.

These legislators have been placed under the supervision of three first-time Lok Sabha MPs - Manicka Tagore (Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu), Ponnam Prabhakar (Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh) and Hamdullah Sayeed (Lakshadweep) - who will function as election managers.

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"The idea is to put to use their experiences and the strategies they had adopted in their wins back home. It is not easy for a candidate to micro-manage the elections … The exercise will definitely help us improve our performance," a Congress functionary said.

"This kind of exercise is being used for the first time. If successful, we will replicate the model in all future elections," the functionary said.

The party is also planning to unleash its firepower in UP after the January 30 assembly elections in Punjab and Uttarakhand. Apart from a series of public meetings by Rahul Gandhi, his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, is also to embark on her second campaign trail in Amethi, Rae Bareli and Sultanpur in the first week of February.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi will also address election meetings - though few this time compared to previous elections - in the coming weeks.

Congress managers are also finalising the campaign schedule of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.