New Delhi, Dec. 19: The headbands screamed "Rae Bareli".

The hundreds who wore them, from furious young men to their anguished elders, were easily noticeable among the boisterous crowd at the Congress headquarters today.

Hordes of supporters had come from across the country to express unflinching loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhis. There were many also from Amethi, the other family borough that is now represented by Rahul Gandhi in Parliament.

But the 2,500-odd from Sonia Gandhi's constituency stood out, not just because of the "Rae Bareli" blazoned across their headbands but also because of their fervour.

"We came here to express solidarity with Sonia Gandhi," was the refrain.

All India Congress Committee secretary Kishori Lal Sharma, Sonia's minder for Rae Bareli, claimed the constituents had come on their own despite his discouragements.

"I held a meeting of the district Congress committee and appealed to everybody not to come here. Soniaji wanted a quiet affair. But they started quarrelling with me," he told The Telegraph.

"They said, 'Soniaji is being sent to jail and you ask us to sit here quietly?' We are not asking you to make travel arrangements - we'll come on our own."

It was apparent that the party's Rae Bareli unit had mobilised the supporters and planned the journey to the smallest detail, while tutoring them to tell the media they had come by themselves.

The older men among the crowd narrated their bonding with the Nehru-Gandhis. Some of them claimed to have come to Delhi when Indira Gandhi was arrested and kept in police custody for a night after her defeat in 1977.

The younger men aired their anger at BJP politician Subramanian Swamy, the chief plaintiff.

"We would have gone to his (Swamy's) house and taught him a lesson but our leaders gave us strict instructions not to venture out of the party office," a young man said.

Several of the constituents said they had set off from Rae Bareli on buses around 2pm yesterday and would return by the same vehicles tonight.

Still, some of them boasted about being ready for the long haul: " Puri-achaar bandh ke laye hain, jab tak Soniaji chhoot nahi jati, yahin rahenge (We've brought puris and pickles; we'll stay put here till Sonia is acquitted)."

Although large areas of Rae Bareli still lack basic amenities, many recalled their constituency's long association with the Nehru-Gandhis with pride.

While Feroze Gandhi represented the constituency in the 1950s, Indira held the seat from 1967 till her historic 1977 defeat after the Emergency. Relatives and family friends like Arun Nehru, Sheila Kaul and Satish Sharma too represented the constituency before Sonia took over in 2004.

Congress officials confessed that their initial plan was to mobilise 50,000 people and choke Delhi today but the strategy was changed two days ago. The party decided that the planned mass procession to the court could be seen as an attempt to pressure the judiciary, and called it off.

Still, tens of thousands reached the party headquarters, 24 Akbar Road, from places as far away as Bihar and Maharashtra, as well as nearby Haryana and Rajasthan. Many indeed turned up uninvited, paying for their journey, food and lodgings.

While hundreds kept chanting slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for hours, others expressed frustration at being refused permission to accompany Sonia and Rahul to court.

The senior politicians and MPs, who had been told to gather around 1pm, made the most of the opportunity. Around a dozen politicians took turns speaking to the assembled reporters while seniors took part in live television debates from almost every room.

Some, like Manmohan Singh, A.K. Antony, Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ambika Soni, Mohsina Kidwai, Sheila Dikshit, Meira Kumar, Ajay Maken and B.K. Hariprasad, were allowed to go to the court.

From there, they all returned to the party headquarters, where Sonia and Rahul met working committee members and addressed the media.