Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh unit of the Congress party has conducted a written test and interviewed candidates for its new media team in the state, introducing a system in UP the party had tried in Gujarat and Karnataka.
The move prompted its main political rival BJP to take a jibe at the Congress party and term the test a "joke". UP BJP spokesperson Chandramohan said in a statement: "When people have rejected Congress president Rahul Gandhi in every examination, then what will the spokespersons do."
At least 65 Congressmen took the test at the UPCC office in Lucknow yesterday. The candidates included some of those who have been the party's spokesperson in the state previously. The written test comprised 14 questions, including the number of districts and zones in Uttar Pradesh, the party's poll percentage and number of seats in previous elections. The candidates also had to answer the "key failures" of the BJP government at the centre and in the state, and the main achievements of the Manmohan Singh government.
Congress national spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi and AICC social media coordinator Rohan Gupta interviewed them. "If you want to be a spokesperson for the state and represent it, you need to have the information about it. You need to have knowledge about basic things," Chaturvedi said. "This is a way to assess them. They will be the face of our party. They have to be well-versed with our legacy and issues in their state," she said.
But BJP spokesperson Chandramohan said the Congress suffered poll defeats in 2014 and 2017 despite Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi being members of Parliament from the state.
"Before the 2017 UP Assembly elections, Congress had given the clarion call of '27 saal, UP behaal'. Then, it entered into an poll pact with the Samajwadi Party.