BURDEN OF POLITICS: Rahul Gandhi carries a child on his shoulders in Ameenabad. In the West, politicians have been known to kiss babies when elections are in the air. Rahul didn’t opt for such lip service but lent his shoulders, instead. After all, the kid’s weight was hardly a load when the burden of his party’s revival in Uttar Pradesh is on his shoulders. It also helped that the massacre-hit villagers needed a shoulder to cry on. (PTI picture)

Lucknow, March 15: Rahul Gandhi consoled an orphaned child, walked into a field surrounded by adoring farmers and took a harassed young woman’s phone number as he returned to the heartland today for another shot at wooing back its Dalits.

The Congress MP reached Ameenabad this morning to meet residents of the Etawah village still traumatised by a bloody massacre over land that left five members of a Dalit family dead.

The killers, who struck in the early hours of March 13, were also Dalits.

Rahul had announced his plans to visit the Uttar Pradesh village, 8km from Etawah town, on the day of the massacre itself. Yesterday evening, chief minister Mayavati dashed to the village in a bid to pre-empt Rahul and announced a string of relief measures for the affected family.

But it did not deter the Congress MP, who went around the village, giving his security team a tough time, and announced a rehabilitation package of Rs 2.5 lakh for the four orphaned members of the family.

The villagers broke down as Rahul, accompanied by state Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi, walked into Ameenabad.

Rahul reached out to Tripti Singh as the seven-year-old stood crying in the courtyard of her family’s mud hut, and spoke to her for five minutes.

“Land disputes account for most of the murders in villages,” said Asha Kumari Daure, a village head, as a puzzled Rahul tried to figure out why a protracted quarrel had suddenly snowballed into a massacre.

Rahul then entered a potato field to talk to farmers before his security team managed to catch up with him. But by then, the newly anointed Congress general secretary was surrounded by a crowd of overwhelmed villagers.

Later, in Etawah town, Rahul stopped for tea at a roadside shop. As his anxious SPG guards tried in vain to throw a protective ring around him, a crowd gathered.

Suman, a 21-year-old Dalit woman, told Rahul how a Thakur family was harassing her. She said she had complained to the Mayavati government but the BSP regime had done nothing to stop the harassment, which had forced her to stay at home and miss college.

Rahul took her phone number and assured her his party would try to help her as much as possible.

Observers said the Amethi MP’s visit was another attempt to revive the Congress’s base a year ahead of scheduled general elections.

Rahul’s effort to make a dent in Mayavati’s Dalit vote-bank began in January in Bundelkhand, the BSP’s traditional support base, when he toured drought-ravaged rural areas and slammed the state government for not doing enough.

On January 26, he spent a night in the house of a Dalit in Amethi.

Mayavati had air-dashed to Ameenabad around 6 in the evening yesterday after receiving Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Varanasi and met the bereaved family during her 30-minute stay.

She ordered the suspension of a police officer and announced that the state government would take the responsibility of educating the orphaned kids and getting them married.