NEW DELHI, 8 June — The main opposition Congress party is hunting for a new leader to rescue it from oblivion in the country's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, where a revival is a must if it has to grab power in New Delhi. Congress President Sonia Gandhi is considering many names to replace Lok Sabha MP Shri Prakash Jaiswal, who quit as president of the party's UP wing accepting responsibility for its drubbing in a string of elections since 2000. A major shake-up in the state unit of the party is looking eminent with the stepping down of Jaiswal. Though, Jaiswal said he was quitting the post to give Sonia, a free hand to restructure the party, insiders believe that he has preempted his sacking by choosing to resign voluntarily. Party sources say Sonia could finalize a new leader in about two weeks. But whoever gets the post will have a long and arduous task of revitalizing the party that has been reduced to an also-ran in the sprawling northern state. The Congress has been struggling for 13 years but without success to regain lost electoral ground in UP - where it once held sway. The Congress' fortunes began slipping dramatically in the state from 1989. In the February assembly elections, it won only 26 seats out of 403, finishing a poor fourth. In last month's by-elections to one Lok Sabha and four assembly seats, the Congress came a cropper, finishing way behind the main contenders: The Samajwadi Party, the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party and its ally, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was the poor showing in the May 31 poll that led Jaiswal to put in his papers. Although the Congress fortunes are on the upswing across the country, its repeated failures to swing back to a position of reckoning is seriously worrying party leaders and sympathizers. Jaiswal, a first-time MP from Kanpur, was picked by Sonia to give the party a fighting image after bitter infighting forced the exit of Uttar Pradesh Congress President Salman Khurshid, a flamboyant former minister of state for external affairs.
