Sonia meets voters at Rae Bareli on Thursday. (AFP)

Rae Bareli, May 4: The main course was to be Sonia Gandhi’s speech, but the organisers had arranged for an appetiser in the form of dancing girls.

The lewd show today threatened to sully the high moral ground from which the Congress chief has been delivering her campaign speeches.

Four girls, midriffs exposed, swayed their hips lustily as the crowd began gathering at the rally venue in Maharajganj. To add to the audience’s obvious enjoyment, it was treated to raunchy Bhojpuri songs by the popular Baleswar Yadav.

“Saiyaji mange gamchha vichhake?. Saiyaji chuma de do chadra vichhake (My love spreads her towel and seeks?. Come my love, spread your shawl and give me a kiss),” Yadav sang.

The show wound up a little before Sonia arrived at 2 pm to seek votes for the May 8 Rae Bareli bypoll. The Congress president, who has been stressing her sense of “values” in her campaign speeches and rebuking her opponents for using improper language, clearly didn’t know about the performance.

The local Congress organisers’ intention was to insure against the crowd leaving if the wait for Sonia became too long in the oppressive May heat, and they largely succeeded. But many party workers were left squirming when some local TV channels began airing the spectacle with captions like “dance dance in Sonia show”.

A blame game has started in the state Congress with many pointing the finger at a key Rahul Gandhi aide.

“Four women in their teens who were part of the troupe hired by local Congress workers were performing in the style of the dance bar girls of Mumbai,” said Sachin Mishra, a party worker. “The Bhojpuri songs by Baleswar Yadav were sensuous and provocative.”

A few embarrassed Congress leaders even tried to suggest the show was a plant by Samajwadi Party leaders, citing Orissa-based folk singer Baleswar Yadav’s proximity to Uttar Pradesh’s ruling party.

A separate dais had been built for the performance, a little away from the podium for Sonia. Local leaders kept addressing the crowd every half an hour through the dance programme, but were often hooted down by an audience eager for the fun to resume.

Sonia addressed her first rally of the day at Shankarpur at 12.30 pm and reached Maharajganj an hour and a half later. She wrapped up her two-day campaign tour of the constituency by urging voters to treat the election as a battle for principles and her dignity.

“Treat this with seriousness and come out in large numbers. This is a fight for principle, justice and dignity. I will never run away from fight against injustice.”

Yesterday, at her rallies in Saraini, Khiro and Rae Bareli Sadar, the crowds nurtured by Rahul for the past one week had braved the stifling heat to wait for Sonia, without the attraction of dancers, and cheered her through her speeches.