Priyanka Gandhi Vadra Begins 2-Day UP Visit With Silent Protest

Priyanka Gandhi's visit to Uttar Pradesh comes as it prepares for the assembly elections early next year.

Targeting the BJP over the recently-held panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh that saw widespread violence and allegations of rigging, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra started her two-day visit to the state with a silent protest in front of a Mahatma Gandhi statue in Lucknow. The party's Uttar Pradesh in-charge arrived at the Lucknow Airport in the afternoon to a huge reception by party workers and led a procession through the main roads of the state capital to the Hazratganj GPO Park Gandhi statue and garlanded it. After that, she sat on a silent protest before the statue against the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in the state. She was joined by her party leaders including state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu. "So many died of Covid. Yet you conducted the panchayat polls because you thought the results will be in your favour. But they weren't. So now you are terrorising candidates of block panchayat elections, tearing their nomination papers, scaring them," she said later.