A shower of rose petals greets Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Uttar Pradesh on Monday. (PTI)

Aligarh, April 9: In the third leg of his election campaign across western Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi has taken on a man who once wanted to be his ally — Ajit Singh.

But the young Amethi MP was careful to avoid what observers said would have been a collision of glances.

Rahul’s helicopter had landed in Baghra, in Saharanpur district, barely 100 metres from a rally being addressed by the Rashtriya Lok Dal chief, who has decided to go it alone in the region after failed talks with Congress leaders for a tie-up.

Rahul immediately headed for the Aaliya Babul Havaiz Dargah, next to the rally ground, where he met the maulanas and got their blessings.

But if Rahul thought he had avoided what could have been embarrassing moments, he didn’t entirely. He walked straight into some RLD workers who had come for the rally as soon as he stepped out of the dargah. But the young man handled the situation well.

As they gathered round him and then waved as he left in a jeep, Rahul told the RLD workers to join his party.

The brief interlude — or strange political interaction, as Congress leaders dubbed it — was not appreciated by Rahul’s partymen, but he told them to be patient with those willing to talk to him.

Rahul then moved to Meerapur, Jansath and Sisauli — all supposed to be RLD strongholds — where the Congress has tried to put a spoke in the wheel of Singh’s caste alliance by tying up with farmer leader Mahendra Singh Tikait’s Bahujan Kisan Dal, a former RLD ally.

Late in the afternoon, he entered Aligarh to a rousing welcome from residents. Rahul, who will stay the night here and meet senior Muslim clerics and local leaders, plans to campaign in all seven Assembly segments of Aligarh district where Muslims account for over 30 per cent of the population.

As he entered the old town, Rahul was greeted by sitting Congress legislator Vivek Bansal and Aligarh MP Chaudhary Vijayendra Singh. The Congress faces a threat because four Muslim leaders — one each from the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party and two Independents — are in the fray from Aligarh and could split minority votes. Rahul also met a team of students from the Aligarh Muslim University.

Rahul urged his party workers to bring more people into the Congress fold. “The problem in the Uttar Pradesh Congress is more organisational and I believe that at a certain point we stop people from coming to (join) the party,” he said.

Asked why his party had failed to strike a deal with the RLD and V.P. Singh’s Jan Morcha, he said: “It was due to differences over the number of seats.”

As he talked to residents till late in the evening, Rahul stressed the need for “unification”.

“The state has been divided over caste and religion during the past 15 years of non-Congress rule,” he told a gathering.

On his mission, he said his first priority was to “increase” the involvement of the youth” as they can bring “new ideas for development”.