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Youth Congress starts drive to induct ‘young’ people

Lucknow: With an eye on the coming Lok Sabha elections, the Youth Congress (YC) has started an extensive drive on the directions of All-India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Rahul Gandhi to induct young people into the party fold.

Mr. Gandhi wants to make YC “full of energy” to propagate its party’s ideology and of the UPA government at the Centre to the people. He has directed the YC office bearers to furnish their educational certificates as an age proof to certify that they are still “young”. According to party sources, certificates being submitted by them would be scrutinised to identify “over aged” office-bearers and remove them. “The certificates collected by the state unit are being forwarded to the central unit for further action,” admitted a senior party functionary. He pointed out that age restriction of 35 years for Youth Congress members existed since its inception, but was never followed at least in Uttar Pradesh.

Former state presidents — Nadeem Ashraf Jaisi and Subodh Srivastava were over aged when nominated for the post. At present there are more than 1,000 office-bearers in the state executive of the YC in Uttar Pradesh and a majority of them are over aged, sources said. If the recent directive is followed in letter and spirit, over 50 per cent of the YC leaders could not remain part of the wing, they said.

YC state president, Yogesh Dixit said they were in a process of collecting certificates and clear picture would emerge only after all the forms were received and scrutinised. — PTI

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