The Election Commission (EC) – almost certainly, unwittingly – has done Rahul Gandhi a huge favour. Gandhi’s Kerala constituency Wayanad goes to the the polls today. That leaves Gandhi free to turn his attention to the erstwhile Gandhi bastion Amethi which will vote almost a full month later on May 20.
The "will-he, won’t he" buzz hit a crescendo soon after workmen were spotted cleaning up Gandhi’s Amethi house and sprucing up the garden. Even more significantly, tent poles and tent material were stacked in one corner of the garden. Congress workers dismissed the excited talk as empty speculation and pointed out that Gandhi would surely hold election rallies in Amethi whether he stood from there or not.
If Rahul’s standing from Amethi, the automatic next question is: will his sister Priyanka stand from Rae Bareli, the constituency from where three generations of her family – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi – have stood before her? Her controversial husband Robert Vadra, who has long harboured political ambitions, hinted he could be a candidate, saying voters wanted someone from the “Gandhi family” to represent them. Lately he has clammed up on that score. But posters featuring him appeared outside the party’s office this week in the Gauriganj area of Amethi, fuelling speculation that he still wanted to stand.
There are two forces at work here. The Congress has clearly been keeping its options on the two constituencies which were once family strongholds, open till the last minute.
Secondly, there could also be a sudden ray of optimism shining on the Opposition camp. Till this week, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav had insisted that his first priority was to mastermind his party’s campaign throughout the state. Suddenly on Wednesday he edged aside his nephew and filed to stand from Kannauj, which both he and wife Dimple have represented in the past. Is the Opposition getting a faint glimmer of hope that it may be possible to unseat the hitherto invincible Narendra Modi/Yogi Adityanath duo?
Akhilesh Yadav, after he filed his candidature, also threw a hint that Rahul Gandhi would soon be doing the same. “Sab aayege aab toh. Mehfil toh ab UP mein hi sajegi (The gathering will be in Uttar Pradesh)."
If Gandhi does stand it will be the third time round against his feisty high-profile opponent Smriti Irani. In 2014 he swept her aside, winning by 1.07 lakh votes. In 2019 Irani bested him by 55,120 votes. There are over 9 lakh voters in Amethi. Irani recently had a well-publicised housewarming for her new home in Amethi and declared it was proof of her attachment to the constituency. However, there are murmurs that she can be high-handed and is not particularly popular with party workers.
Mind you, the BJP has only made its mark in Amethi in recent years. In 2009, Gandhi defeated his closest BSP rival by a gigantic 370,000. The BJP was far behind in third position.
Irani has been doing her best to get under Gandhi’s skin at every turn of the way. She went all the way to Wayanad in Kerala, Gandhi’s other constituency, to campaign for the BJP’s K. Surendran. It’s Surendran’s ninth time standing for election – he has never won even once. Wayanad is one of the Congress’ safest seats in Kerala.
Irani has a well-rehearsed script to counter anything her rivals may throw at her. She talks about the low-cost housing built in the constituency and the taps installed (it’s not clear whether they all have running water); then there’s the free rations and loans given to people. Also, there’s a bypass that’s been built in the last five years and the state’s largest Coca-Cola bottling plant in the constituency. There’s also a Rs 160-crore poultry feed and hatchery unit opened by the IB Group last year. Irani’s careful to give credit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for all the benefits that have come the way of Amethi’s people.
Irani is constantly on the offensive and contemptuously asks why the Gandhis couldn’t pull off such projects in the decades when Amethi was their pocket borough. It was Rahul’s uncle, Sanjay Gandhi, who first stood for election in Amethi and, after he died, Rajiv Gandhi took over the seat. When Rajiv also died in 1991, family favourite Satish Sharma took it over. The BJP managed to unseat him for one year in the late 1990s. One answer to Irani’s question may be that the Congress has not been able to seize power in Uttar Pradesh for the last 30 years so that prevented it from pushing through new projects.
It should also be said that Irani hasn’t been able to deliver on all her promised projects. The government armaments factory should have been turning out AK-203 rifles by now but that has been shot down by the Russia-Ukraine war. Also, the government’s promised Rs 300-crore medical college is running behind schedule. And the district authorities are still searching for the right plot for a nursing college.
The Congress is standing for election in 17 Lok Sabha seats in UP and has named candidates for all its seats except Rae Bareli and Amethi. Realistically, it doesn’t have much chance of winning in most of these UP constituencies. Kunwar Danish Ali could possibly win in Amroha. The Congress will also be standing in Ghaziabad where in 2019 Gen. V. K. Singh pulled in 944,503 votes and the Congress managed to make it only to third position with 111,944 votes.
Gandhi must face one other harsh reality. Congress has fallen abysmally behind in all the five assembly constituencies that make up the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency, snaring just 22 per cent of the vote in the 2022 UP elections. Could the Gandhi name, combined with his voter appeal swing the voters back to him in a Irani-Gandhi rematch? Congress insists its internal polls give Gandhi an 80 per cent chance of victory. But that could be just wishful talk.
