Rahul Gandhi's visit to Pondicherry expected to strengthen Congress youth base

AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi will have an interaction with Puducherry University students here today during a brief visit, seen as part of the Congress efforts to strengthen party's youth base in the Union Territory.

He is also scheduled to inaugurate a Rs two crore stadium named after his father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, on the University premises.
 
The meeting with students is a closed door affair and the press will be kept at bay, university sources said.
  
Gandhi will also greet newly elected office bearers of the Puducherry State Youth Congress committee,party sources said.

"We want to ensure that the party's youth wing is strengthened as they are the determining factor in any poll," Congress sources said.

Puducherry was the first State where the Youth Congress committees were put in place through process of election from the grassroot level.Each of around 70,000 members has been issued the identity cards when the AIYC conducted the polls here in July last year.

Rahul Gandhi will be on a second visit to Puducherry as he had visited the Union Territory in March last setting the roadmap then for the polls to set up youth Congress committees.
  
The Congress government in Puducherry is supported from outside by DMK and three Independents.