Cong draws up plan to revive party in UP after LS rout

New Delhi: After its rout in Lok Sabha polls, Congress has drawn up an action plan to revive the party in Uttar Pradesh by convening meetings of senior leaders at Lucknow on September 23 followed by a day-long interaction with newly appointed district chiefs. AICC General Secretary Madusudan Mistry, in-charge of party affairs in the state, said a new PCC will be in place soon after the September 23-24 deliberations. [caption id=“attachment_1681723” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational Image. AFP[/caption] The party had managed to win only two Lok Sabha seats - Amethi (Rahul Gandhi) and Rae Bareli (Sonia Gandhi) - this year, while BJP’s tally shot up to 71 from just 10 in 2009 in Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats. In the previous Lok Sabha, Congress had won 22 seats. It had, however, fared poorly in the Assembly polls in 2012, securing only 28 of the 403 seats. The party had in June dissolved its Uttar Pradesh unit and all district and block committees, but retained Nirmal Khatri as the chief of the UP Pradesh Congress Committee. Congress is out of power in the home state of the Gandhi-Nehru family for the last 25 years after the Mandal and Ram Mandir upsurge threw it out of office in 1989. PTI