Rahul Gandhi to begin UP poll campaign

Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi on Monday is expected to commence his campaigns for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh from Phulpur, a small town around 30 kilometres from Allahabad.

Gandhi, seen as his party's Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 General Elections, has been travelling these days to the poverty-stricken backward state, which is set to go for polls early next year.

After a large public meeting in Allahabad on Sunday, Gandhi's official campaign begins in Phulpur which was the constituency from where former prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, a Congress party icon, was elected to Parliament in the first Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress party has been out of rule from the state for over a decade.

Gandhi is making special efforts to bring back the party to power. He travels extensively to rural areas and occasionally spends nights at poor people's thatched-roofed huts or sometimes has food with some Dalit family.

However, Uttar Pardesh Chief Minister Mayawati, against whose policies much of Gandhi's campaign flourishes, however has has termed the efforts as "drama" and said the Congress poster boy has a hypocritical stance towards corruption.

"He does not see the corruption in his own government, which is giving Uttar Pradesh a step-motherly treatment by not releasing the funds in time and thereby hampering the development of the state," Mayawati said on Sunday.