“Women are not safe in the State and the mining and land mafia are ruling the roost. The only solution is the change of the power in the State.” Ganesh Godiyal, president of the Uttarakhand Congress, said that in Dehradun, and with it the party opened its campaign for the 2027 assembly elections.
Godiyal and Pritam Singh, who chairs the party’s Election Campaign Committee, outlined the plan to reporters at Rajiv Bhawan on a Saturday, according to the Pioneer. Public outreach begins on June 28 and runs district by district in the hills.
Four zones, ten districts
The hill constituencies come first. The party split them into four zones, each with a named leader and a team behind him.
Zone one covers Pithoragarh, Bageshwar and Champawat. Godiyal takes it himself, with three MLAs, among them Harish Dhami, running programs in different constituencies. Zone two, Pauri, Chamoli and Rudraprayag, belongs to Harak Singh Rawat, who chairs the Election Management Committee and has five colleagues assisting.
Pritam Singh himself heads zone three, Tehri and Uttarkashi, helped by Bhuwan Kapdi, the deputy leader of the party’s legislature wing, and one other MLA. Zone four, Nainital and Almora, goes to Karan Mahara, a past state party president, supported by a former assembly speaker, Govind Singh Kunjwal, and three others.
Two senior figures are not tied to one area. Harish Rawat, a former chief minister, and Yashpal Arya, who leads the opposition in the assembly, can join any zone, and ANI reported that the party wants both to visit all four.
What they plan to say
Leaders will hold public meetings and protests in each constituency, make contact visits and sit with party workers. Their message, as ANI summarized it, centers on the state of schools and health care, joblessness, corruption, paper leak cases, rising prices and worsening law and order. As the principal opposition, Godiyal said, Congress has a duty to put the ground reality before the public. Party leaders would carry the government’s alleged failures to people across the state.
His own list was blunter: people were reeling under price rises and unemployment while the government was immersed neck deep in corruption.
A second phase is planned to begin on July 15, aimed at constituencies in Udham Singh Nagar, Haridwar and Dehradun.
Sources
- Congress sounds bugle for 2027 Uttarakhand polls with state campaign (ANI via Asianet Newsable)
- Congress comes in election mode with Assembly level programmes (Pioneer Edge)
