Janjivan Bureau
New Delhi: BJP leaders might have jumped the gun by questioning Priyanka Gandhi’s absence from the ongoing election campaign because she is expected in Rae Bareli tomorrow to campaign for the Congress.
Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to address two public rallies in Rae Bareli tomorrow and Priyanka will share the dais with him. While the Congress vice-president will leave to campaign elsewhere, his sister will stay put in Rae Bareli as she does in every election.
Union ministers Smriti Irani and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had today taunted the Congress for Priyanka’s absence.
Irani told a news conference in Amethi that Priyanka was absent because she feared “people’s questions on unfulfilled promises in the constituency”. Irani claimed to have continued working for the people despite losing to Rahul in Amethi in 2014.
Naqvi, responding to Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad’s argument that Priyanka was looking after the entire Uttar Pradesh election and that army chiefs don’t go to fight on the border, said: “I am not aware how many army chiefs there are in the Congress. It is so confused… Soniaji is their army chief, Rahulji is, Priyankaji is, so is Robert Vadra.” He added: “The Congress has become a benami property but the question is, who is the owner?”
Priyanka has been looking after the Uttar Pradesh campaign because Rahul is constantly in the field. Sources said she will reach Rae Bareli tomorrow to start campaigning for the six Assembly seats that will vote in the fourth phase on February 23. The four constituencies in neighbouring Amethi will vote in the fifth phase on February 27.
Sources said Sonia Gandhi, who did not campaign in Punjab, Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand and even the rest of Uttar Pradesh, might also travel to Rae Bareli before the polling date because she is the MP from there.
A leader said: “Soniaji chose not to campaign at all in this round of election and Rahul shouldered the full responsibility. But because she is a member of Lok Sabha from Rae Bareli, she will go there to interact with the people before the election.”
Priyanka’s absence from the campaign so far had exposed the Congress to embarrassing questions because of media hype that she would campaign throughout the state. Not only the Congress candidates, even Samajwadi Party candidates had wanted her to visit their constituencies. Most Samajwadi candidates have used photographs of Rahul and Priyanka in their posters.
But top Congress leaders had always maintained that Priyanka would restrict herself to Amethi-Rae Bareli. They were upset because they suspected strategist Prashant Kishor’s role in the media reports that she would campaign intensively across the state, including a possible outing with Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav.
The Congress never officially spoke of any such plan even as it acknowledged Priyanka’s involvement in the behind-the-scenes election management.
It is possible that she delayed her arrival in Amethi-Rae Bareli because of confusion over seats with ally Samajwadi Party. While the Congress fielded candidates for all the 10 seats in the two districts, Samajwadi candidates also filed papers in two seats each in Amethi and Rae Bareli. Friendly fights in four seats of these high-profile parliamentary constituencies cast a shadow over the coalition’s key theme – ” UP ko ye saath pasand hai”.
Under these circumstances, Priyanka will have to walk the tightrope because she can neither support nor oppose the Samajwadis. Rahul had earlier dismissed these contradictions asserting that “they were not the central issues”, but campaigning among the people would require an entirely different narrative when the main opponent in four seats is the alliance partner.
The most complex is the Amethi seat where Amita Sinh, wife of Congress campaign committee chief Sanjay Sinh, is contesting against Samajwadi minister Gayatri Prajapati.
Addressing a rally in Barabanki, the Prime Minister repeated the term ” UP ka god liya beta (adopted son of UP)” no less than four times in his 30-minute speech. Leaders of the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Congress have pitched the ongoing Assembly polls as a contest between “Apne UP ke ladke (Our own boys of UP)” and ” Baahari Narendra Modi (Outsider Narendra Modi)”.
Although Modi did not directly refer to the Samajwadi-Congress slogan, his repeated reminder that “UP’s adopted son” was doing more work for the “poor” in the heartland was seen as an answer to his rivals. Modi, from Gujarat, is the MP from Varanasi.
“Mayawati in the first two years of her rule (2007 to 2012) had electrified 23 villages. Akhilesh (since 2012) electrified three during his first two years as chief minister. But this adopted son of UP electrified more than 1,350 villages in the state within two years of taking over as Prime Minister,” Modi said, turning both his hands towards his chest.
Modi slammed the Congress-Samajwadi tie-up and pointed out that Congress leaders had taken out a yatra a few months ago with the chant ” 27 Saal UP Behaal (27 years of misrule in UP)”. “What happened all of a sudden that they embraced each other? Ram Manohar Lohia fought all his life against the Congress. But what kind of fear brought the SP and the Congress together?”
Samajwadi leaders call themselves the followers of socialist icon Lohia.
Rahul had led a “Kisan Yatra (farmers’ rally)” in September last year with a slogan that referred to “27 years of misrule” by successive state governments. This included Samajwadi rule for around 12 years. The Samajwadi-Congress tie-up was sealed last month.#Around 80km away in Sitapur, Rahul was addressing a rally around the same time as Modi and said the Prime Minister “should stop speaking and start listening to people to understand their woes”. “Modiji should listen to the people to learn about their problems. But Modiji’s problem is that he only speaks whatever is there in his mind,” the Congress vice-president said. He was possibly alluding to Modi’s speeches on Mann Ki Baat, the Prime Minister’s radio show broadcast every fortnight.
The radio show was also on the mind of Dimple Yadav, Akhilesh’s wife and Kannauj MP, when she addressed a rally in Kanpur. ” Akhilesh Yadav mann ki baat nahi karte, balki kaam ki baat karte hain,” she said, “Akhilesh believes in work, not words.”
In Sitapur, Rahul said: “Recently, I had gone to meet Modiji in his office with the application of two crore farmers of Uttar Pradesh to waive their loans because he has already waived the loan of 50 rich families of the country in last two-and-a-half years.”
“I was sitting on the other side of the table,” the Congress vice-president recounted, before adding: “Now you see the reaction of Modiji.” Rahul then remained silent for a few moments, staring to his left to mimic the Prime Minister. As the crowd giggled, the Congress vice-president said: “He (Modi) didn’t utter a single word.”
