No Cakewalk For Rahul

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Sister act Priyanka has rushed to Rahul’s rescue as the Congress leader faces a tough battle in Amethi, Photo: AFP
Sister act Priyanka has rushed to Rahul’s rescue as the Congress leader faces a tough battle in Amethi, Photo: AFP

The Congress’ first family is a worried lot. Negative field reports emanating from Amethi about Rahul Gandhi’s shaky electoral prospects and the general disenchantment of the voters with the party and the Gandhi scion have forced the top brass to take the battle more seriously. “This time, the situation will be very different,” says a Congress leader on condition of anonymity. “It is not going to be like the two previous elections in 2004 and 2009, when Rahul won with a comfortable margin.”

Congress president Sonia Gandhi herself brought to the fore her son’s vulnerability by visiting Amethi twice in April after staying away from there for more than a decade. Along with Priyanka and Robert Vadra, she accompanied Rahul to file the nomination papers on 12 April and held a roadshow along with the entire family.

The hostile winds have shaken the family and Priyanka Vadra has taken over the campaign in the constituency, where old connections with cadres are being revived and efforts are on for direct communication with the electorate.

On 19 April, Sonia addressed a rally in Amethi, in which she sought to strike an emotional chord with the voters. “Like my mother-in-law Indira Gandhi handed over her son Rajiv Gandhi to the constituency, I gave my son to the people of Amethi in 2004,” she said. Digging into history, she also sought to remind the voters, “Our relations are five generations old. Rajiv Gandhi contested from here and initiated the process of all-round development. The infertile land has become fertile today, roads have been constructed, Amethi has become an educational hub and every family has a cell phone now.”

“It is not that the party has woken up just now to the challenge Rahul Gandhi faces in Amethi,” says a senior Congress leader. “Within a week of AAP’s decision to field Kumar Vishwas, the Congress announced its nomination of outgoing Sultanpur MP Sanjay Singh as the Rajya Sabha candidate from Assam. Sanjay Singh, the scion of the erstwhile royal family of Amethi, had fallen from the Gandhi family’s grace long ago but was being pampered only to bolster the support of the influential royals and the Rajput community in favour of Rahul Gandhi.”

Interestingly, Sanjay’s wife Amita Singh is the Congress candidate from the neighbouring Sultanpur Lok Sabha seat against Varun Gandhi of the BJP.

A former MLA from Amethi, Sanjay Singh was once a towering leader of the Uttar Pradesh Congress and a confidant of Rajiv Gandhi. In the wake of the Bofors controversy, he quit the Congress in 1988 and joined the Jan Morcha, floated by his father-in-law VP Singh. In 1998, he became the mp from Amethi on a BJP ticket. He returned to the Congress fold in 2003 and was elected from Sultanpur in 2009.

Sanjay Gandhi was the first member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to contest from Amethi in 1977. He lost that time but managed to win three years later. After Sanjay’s death, Rajiv Gandhi contested from here in 1982, ’84, ’89 and ’91 and won every time. After Rajiv’s assassination in 1991, his confidant Satish Sharma contested from Amethi that year and won. He repeated the trick in 1996. Barring the 1998 election when Sanjay Singh won on a BJP ticket, Amethi has been an impregnable fort of the Gandhi family. Sonia made her political debut from here in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls. In 2004, she shifted to Rae Bareli, another family domain, earlier represented by Indira Gandhi.

Motilal Nehru was the counsel of the royal family of Amethi, while Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi too had close personal relations with Raja Rananjay Singh of Amethi. So, what is ailing the Congress party in Amethi?

Pankaj Shukla, AAP’s campaign incharge of Amethi, narrates an incident that could throw some light on the issue. “On 12 April, Rahul Gandhi came to Gauriganj (the district headquarters) to file his nomination papers,” says Shukla. “Dharmendra Shukla, a former secretary of the Youth Congress’ state unit, wanted to garland Rahul but was badly thrashed by the SPG commandos accompanying Rahul, Priyanka and Sonia. None of them recognised him. He suffered grievous injuries and had to be hospitalised. This was the treatment meted out to Dharmendra, a known Congress leader in Amethi whose hoardings dot every nook and corner of the sprawling constituency. This is the level of communication that Rahul has with his party leaders.”

Adds Rita Singh, a political activist fighting for the rights of farmers in Amethi: “Unlike Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, Rahul is the least accessible leader that Amethi has ever seen. Apart from SPG commandos, Rahul is surrounded by a coterie of leaders from Delhi and their local cronies whenever he visits Amethi. To draw his attention towards the problems of the local people, I had to wave black flags and even stage a demonstration.”

Congress leader Jamuna Prasad Shukla, who is busy campaigning in Amethi, candidly admits to the shortcomings of the Congress and Rahul Gandhi. “Amethi is not like Baramati, Chindwara and Saifai; it remains a largely backward rural constituency with potholed roads and erratic power supply,” he says. “The Congress is seeking votes in the name of development works undertaken during the time of Rajiv Gandhi while the youth of Amethi are mad about Narendra Modi. AAP is no challenge to us. Our real fight is with the BJP because they have organised cadres and the entry of Smriti Irani has galvanised the rank and file of the party.”

BJP leaders are feeling bullish about Irani’s chances. “The people are no longer interested in voting for the absentee landlord,” says MP Singh, a retired teacher who is in charge of the BJP campaign in Amethi. “In the past 15 years, I have never seen such enthusiasm for the BJP among the common voters and party cadres in Amethi. The Modi wave has fired up their imagination. For the people of Amethi, Rahul is not only the local MP, but the de facto head of the UPA government. Rahul had enough power to rip up and throw a draft ordinance approved by the Union Cabinet into the dustbin, so he could have not only ensured the development of Amethi, but also prevented the large number of scams from taking place.

“The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to marshal support for its candidate. Besides Narendra Modi, senior leader Sushma Swaraj is slated to address meetings in all the five assembly segments falling under the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency. Those who have not visited Amethi will not believe me, but you can take it from me that the election result from this seat will stun the nation.”

But Congress leader Chandrakant Dube begs to differ. “It is absolute rubbish to label Rahul Gandhi as the absentee landlord,” he says. “In the past 10 years, he has regularly visited Amethi and interacted with the people and ensured 100 percent utilisation of the MPLAD funds. The funds were spent in a most democratic manner and all the decisions were taken in panchayat meetings.”’

In the 2012 Assembly election, the SP won three of the five segments that fall under the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency, while the Congress won two. This time, the SP has not fielded a candidate. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had polled only 37,000 votes. But the party’s vote share registered a sharp spike to close to 1.25 lakh in the 2012 Assembly election.

Contrary to popular perception, local residents don’t believe that AAP poses that big a threat to Rahul Gandhi. “Thanks to the roadshows by Arvind Kejriwal and AAP candidate Kumar Vishwas, television channels are reporting that AAP is ahead, but the fledgling party lacks cadres at the grassroot level,” says Raj Khanna, a lawyer from Amethi. “AAP’s election campaign is being managed by outsiders.”

virendranathbhatt@gmail.com

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