Congress to go solo in UP council polls, vows to champion youth, teachers

In a spirited bid to reclaim political ground in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress on Friday, 10 October, announced its decision to contest all 11 seats — five graduates’ and six teachers’ constituencies — in the upcoming Legislative Council elections scheduled for next year.

Signalling an assertive, go-it-alone approach, the party unveiled five potential candidates while declaring that its campaign would focus on amplifying the voices of the state’s youth, educators, and intellectuals.

State Congress chief Ajay Rai, in an impassioned statement, said the party’s mission was to “restore dignity and democratic integrity” to the council by ensuring genuine representation for teachers and graduates — communities he described as “the conscience keepers of society.” To this end, the Congress has launched an extensive voter registration drive, targeting five lakh graduate voters and two lakh teacher voters across the state.

Rai announced the appointment of five coordinators, each entrusted with overseeing one of the key constituencies: Vikrant Vashishtha (Meerut-Saharanpur Graduate), Raghuraj Singh Pal (Agra Graduate), Devmani Tiwari (Lucknow Graduate), Sanjay Priyadarshi (Varanasi Teachers’), and Arvind Singh Patel (Varanasi Graduates’).

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh: On CM Yogi Adityanath's 'Swadeshi' call, Congress State President Ajay Rai says, "They use foreign products and unnecessarily promote 'Make in India' slogans..." pic.twitter.com/eBZGtZs0Tu

— IANS (@ians_india) October 10, 2025

4,271 in one house: Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh the latest ‘voter list wonder’

The coordinators, he said, will spearhead ground-level mobilisation and act as the bridge between voters and the party’s central campaign machinery.

A ‘Connect Centre’ has been set up at the Uttar Pradesh Congress headquarters in Lucknow to coordinate the ambitious electoral exercise. Linked to this will be district-level Coordinator Committees to streamline communication, voter outreach, and feedback. “All our frontal organisations — from the Legal and Teachers’ Cells to the Medical Cell — have been assigned special responsibilities. This will be a collective effort to uphold democracy,” Rai emphasised.

The Congress leader also alleged that the ruling BJP had “manipulated” the last Legislative Council elections through “vote theft, booth capturing, and ballot box replacement,” claiming the party would not allow “the voice of democracy to be silenced again.”

Underlining the scale of the organisational push, Rai said Members of Parliament, MLAs, and senior leaders from the state unit would serve as in-charges for each of the 11 seats.

Of the 100 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, members are elected through a diverse electoral process — by MLAs, civic and panchayat representatives, teachers, and graduates — while a few are nominated by the government.

With the new campaign, the Congress appears determined to project itself as the authentic voice of Uttar Pradesh’s educated class, vowing to transform the upcoming Council elections into a referendum on academic integrity, democratic reform, and the battle for the state’s intellectual soul.

With PTI inputs