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On Rae Bareli and sycophancy

There was never any doubt that Sonia Gandhi would regain her Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat, which she gave up on the office of profit issue. Her resignation was an emotive act bound to appeal to an electorate known for its unswerving loyalty to the Gandhi-Nehru family. Ms. Gandhi was, in effect, competing against herself. Yet the Congress fought the battle as if its survival hinged on it. The soap operatic campaign, followed obsessively by a voracious media and micro-managed to the last detail by Rahul Gandhi, has ended in a record breaking victory. The Congress chief secured 474,891 votes, beating her nearest rival, the Samajwadi Party's Raj Kumar Choudhary, by a stupendous margin of 417,888 votes. With Ms. Gandhi polling 80.48 per cent of the popular vote, the highest recorded in the constituency, her rivals unavoidably lost their deposits. Vinay Katiyar, a one-time head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's Uttar Pradesh unit, bit the dust as did the Uma Bharti-supported Apna Dal candidate, Prabha Singh Lodhi. The Congress and the first family could not have asked for more. Following her resignation over the office of profit controversy, a "hurt" Ms. Gandhi, vowing to fight back, rushed to her constituency seeking vindication. The message was clear: the offence caused to Ms. Gandhi had to be avenged, if necessary by tilting at windmills.

However, even as the Congress and Ms. Gandhi's children glory in the triumph, they ought to reflect soberly on a few things. Ms. Gandhi's gigantic victory owes as much to extraordinary circumstances and the near absence of competition as to their hard work. In 2004, the SP fielded Ashok Singh, a two-time M.P. from Rae Bareli who took away a fair share of the popular vote. By contrast, the SP's Mr. Chaudhry and the Apna Dal's Ms. Lodhi were unknown quantities in a family fief basking in post-resignation warmth. Never serious, Mr. Katiyar gave up the pretence of a fight after Pramod Mahajan's death. For all the war-like preparations, the voter turnout was an unedifying 43 per cent — contrasting with the 70-80 voting percentages witnessed in the southern and eastern Assembly contests. Yet in a Pavlovian response, the verdict was overinterpreted, in party circles, as a mandate for family rule. The counting was barely over when calls went out for Ms. Gandhi to occupy the Prime Minister's chair, and for Mr. Rahul Gandhi to take up responsibilities at the national level. The Congress chief quickly scotched the first move but hinted at a larger role for her son. It can be nobody's case that Mr. Rahul Gandhi ought not to be more fruitfully utilised. A penchant for hard work aside, he has thus far shown a healthy disdain for sycophancy, which is all to the good. Yet to invest him with magical qualities is to do him, the party, and the polity a singular disfavour. A mock-battle won resoundingly in a single constituency in U.P. is merely a battle won in Rae Bareli.

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