Congress to blow poll bugle on Modi's home turf; Rahul, Priyanka to attend rally

A meeting of the Congress Working Committee will be held in Ahmedabad on February 28, in a clear indication that the principal opposition party plans to take the fight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home turf in its campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The meeting of the CWC, which is the highest decision-making body of the Congress, will be followed by a rally at Adalaj, 20 km from Gujarat capital Gandhinagar. The rally, which will be attended by a number of senior Congress leaders, including party president Rahul Gandhi, newly-appointed AICC general secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will mark the launch of the party's campaign for the Lok Sabha polls.

“There will be an all-religion prayer meeting at Sabarmati Ashram, following which the CWC will meet at the Sardar Patel Memorial Trust in Ahmedabad. This way, we will pay homage to the two sons of the soil, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,” said a senior Congress leader.

This will be the first time after 1960 that the CWC holds its meeting in Gujarat. In October 2018, the CWC met at the Sevagram Ashram in Wardha, Maharashtra to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

The Congress will in effect sound the poll bugle with the CWC meeting and the rally in Gujarat, and the message that it wants to convey through the event is that it is ready to take on Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, both of whom belong to the state, head-on.

The party, which gave a tough fight to the BJP in the assembly elections in Gujarat in 2017, is hopeful of doing well in the state in the parliamentary polls. The state has 26 Lok Sabha seats on offer, and the Congress had not won even a single seat in the 2014 elections.