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Sonia is looking to win Rae Bareli for the third time and Rahul to retain Amethi for a second term. Both contests appear so one-sided — in a state bracing for make-or-mar battles in most other places — that Congress supporters here are feeling cheated of excitement.
So, they have created their own competition. Come April 23 and 30, it will be Amethi versus Rae Bareli, with eyes peeled on the May 16 results to see who wins by a wider margin: mother or son.
The competition threatens to be tough. Rahul had won by 2.90 lakh votes in 2004 and Sonia by a margin of nearly 4.18 lakh in the May 2006 by-election after quitting her seat over the office-of-profit controversy.
Akmal Khan, the Congress block president of Jagdishpur in Amethi, said the local unit’s initial target was a five-lakh margin for Rahul, but it has now scaled the figure down to four lakh. Khan refused to give reasons for this, but local Congress leaders said they weren’t sure of the “damage potential” of Rahul’s only rival — “if he can be called that” — Asish Shukla of the Bahujan Samaj Party. Shukla is a former Congress member.
“Mayavati seemed to be going after Rahul with a vengeance, although she now appears to have got distracted by other problems,” a Congress leader said.
“Also, we aren’t sure of what the turnout would be like considering that in Soniaji’s last by-election, it was very low. She was lucky that 80 per cent of the votes cast went to her kitty.”
Another local Congress leader, involved in micro-managing Rahul’s electioneering, admitted that a degree of complacency had set in because victory appeared assured.
Some are also ready to acknowledge that divisions have cropped up in the Amethi Congress, between the “haves” and the “have-nots”, during Rahul’s five-year stint.
“It’s not Rahul’s fault. He detests sycophants and ticks off those habituated to showing their faces at every meeting of his and then sitting back and relaxing,” another local Congress worker said.
“But his managers are doing what the Congress is notorious for. They have set up their networks of patronage, which include a select few and leave most of us out.”
He added: “Some workers seem to be in a mood to thumb their nose at Rahul and say, ‘Bacchu (child), now it’s our turn to show you what we are capable of’. It’s for him and Priyankaji to manage such elements.”
Another reason is that Rae Bareli has a well-oiled system of disbursing political largesse evenly because of its “historical” importance. The family has held the constituency for decades since the 1950s — Sonia’s father-in-law Feroze Gandhi and then her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi represented it in Parliament. On this score, Amethi is being dubbed a “neophyte”.
“It’s a relatively new seat (Gandhi pocket borough). It was first won (for the family) by Sanjay Gandhi in 1974 and later by Rajiv Gandhi, Soniaji and Rahul,” said Anish Vaish, the nyay panchayat president of Nihalgarh in Amethi.
Besides, although Rahul gets “90 out of 100” for keeping most of his promises — village electrification, hand-pumps, upgrading the Sanjay Gandhi hospital in Munshiganj and reopening a subsidiary of the Steel Authority of India Limited in Jagdishpur — there is a second view.
Some Congress workers believe he ought to have been “more combative” with Mayavati instead of trying to better her brand of Dalit politics by dropping in at the homes of Dalits and sharing their meals.
For instance, when Mayavati tried to stall a railway coach factory in Rae Bareli, Sonia got her to back off. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister has also blocked some projects Rahul had planned in Amethi — such as a petroleum research institute named after Rajiv Gandhi, a paper mill and a CRPF camp — but he hasn’t gone on the offensive on these.
“The reality is, Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi were able to do much more for us because the Congress was in a majority in Delhi and Lucknow,” said a Jagdishpur Congress veteran, Bapulal Passi.
A widespread local view is that Amethi has been a prayogshala (laboratory) for the “young Rahul” who, a Congress leader said, is yet to come out of his parents’ shadow.
“He is discovering India through our eyes. He learnt that there was nothing like community hand-pumps in the village —the upper castes would not let the Dalits use the pumps installed near their hamlets. So Rahul decided that the hand-pumps he was funding from his MP’s local area development money would be installed in neutral zones. He put workers in charge to see they were used in a fair way,” a Congress worker said.
FAMILY FEATS
Nehru-Gandhi victory margins over the years. Note: The number of voters has risen steadily. For instance, just 1.93 lakh voted in Phulpur in the 1962 election, while 13.62 lakh voted in Rae Bareli in the 2006 by-election. In percentage terms, if Jawaharlal Nehru got 61.62 per cent of the votes polled in Phulpur in 1962, Sonia Gandhi bagged 80.49 per cent in Rae Bareli in 2006
