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Congress vs. Maya in family backyard

Vidya Subrahmaniam

The Gandhis harp on unity. So does BSP leader Mayawati in the crucial Amethi-Rae Bareli belt.

— Photos: PTI, Subir Roy

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi during a roadshow in Aligarh on Wednesday. (Right) Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati at an election rally in Lucknow.

IT IS a battle between the Congress' first family and Mayawati in the Gandhi backyard of Amethi-Rae Bareli. For the Gandhis the struggle is to break a seeming jinx: voters here swear undying loyalty to family members yet show a paradoxical unwillingness to extend the favour to other Congress candidates. As the focus in the fifth phase of polling turns to this region, it is clear neither side wants anything left to chance.

There are 10 Assembly seats in the two Lok Sabha constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli represented by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi respectively. If this colossal twin presence makes the current election a challenge for the Congress, the stakes are higher still for the family. On Sunday, Rahul Gandhi dashed from distant Banda to Amethi for a late evening date with his voters who basked in the attention, never mind that the "raja beta (darling son)" could hardly be seen in the creeping darkness (Amethi endures a daily power shutdown of six to seven hours despite the Gandhi MP). The family heir has since slipped in and out of the constituency in a frenetic effort to pack in as much as he can before campaigning draws to a close.

Star campaigner

However, the star of the Congress' roadshow blitz is Priyanka Vadra whose speeding convoy is as much a topic of conversation in these parts as she herself. The Gandhi daughter campaigns through the day, mostly on her own, and sometimes with her two children to the abiding delight of residents who endlessly extol her virtues. "Is mein Indira ki jhalak dikhti hai (she is so much like Indira Gandhi)" they gush, as she dives into the crowds seeking their blessings for the Congress candidates. Ms. Vadra does not say it in so many words but her message is clear: Her family's "izzat (honour)" is at stake. As she departs in a swirl of dust, her audience echoes her thoughts: With mother and son reigning in Rae Bareli and Amethi, any Congress defeat here cannot but dent the Gandhi image.

The doughty Ms. Mayawati is, of course, unfazed by the Priyanka effect. On Sunday she addressed a mammoth rally in Sultanpur, the district headquarters for three of Amethi's Assembly segments. On Monday, she was in Rae Bareli and on Tuesday she took the fight right into Amethi. Tuesday also saw the arrival in Amethi of Rajnath Singh and Mulayam Singh, one a former Chief Minister and the other the incumbent Chief Minister. However, the threat to the Gandhis is mainly from the Bahujan Samaj Party, on the rise in the State and intent on testing its evidently successful Dalit-Brahmin formula in the family heartland.

When a Gandhi contests from either Amethi or Rae Bareli, caste and religion do the vanishing trick as do the litany of complaints about power-cuts, bad roads, and unemployment. The loyalty factor magnifies manifold when it is a double whammy, as happened in 2004 when Ms. Sonia Gandhi shifted to Rae Bareli to make way for son Rahul in Amethi. The rule does not hold true for the Assembly seats. The same voters who show off their resplendent unity to the Gandhis will quote minute caste "aankda (statistics)" to visiting journalists to prove the impending doom of one Congress candidate or another.

In the 2002 Assembly election, the Congress won only three seats from the region. This despite Ms. Gandhi's charismatic presence in Amethi and the fact that family confidant Satish Sharma was MP from Rae Bareli. The party could not even win the Amethi Assembly seat. As for Mr. Sharma, he lost the Amethi Lok Sabha seat to the local Raja, Sanjay Sinh, in 1998. And in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, with voters swooning over mother and son in Rae Bareli and Amethi, he lost from next-door Sultanpur.

The Congress' sob story does not end here. Though the party won three Assembly seats in 2002, today its strength is only two, thanks to a host of post-2002 complications. Of the three, it lost one, Rae Bareli, to desertion. Akhilesh Singh, who won the seat with a vote share of 74.18 per cent, turned a bitter critic of Ms. Gandhi and left to form his own party. A second seat, Gauriganj, was wrested by the BSP's Jung Bahadur Singh in a by-election. Mr. Singh subsequently defected to the Samajwadi Party (SP). If the Congress was saved further ignominy, it was courtesy the BJP's Amita Singh, who, in 2004, resigned her Amethi seat to seek re-election from the Congress. So on 2007 poll eve, the scorecard in Amethi-Rae Bareli reads thus. BJP: one; Congress: two; BSP: two; SP: four; and Independent: one.

Desperate to salvage the situation, the Congress has done some manipulations of its own. In three seats it has fielded strong performers from other parties — in Gauriganj from the BSP; in Bachhrawan from the BJP, and in Sataon from the Lok Janshakti Party. The party's calculation is that the Gandhi charisma will combine with the strength of the individual candidates to deliver it victories across the region.

Dalit-Brahmin formula

Ms. Mayawati's answer to this is her by-now famous Dalit-Brahmin formula. Fortuitously for her, Dalits and Brahmins are in sizeable numbers through the region. The BSP plan was evident in the supremo's high-energy rally in Sultanpur. A riveting qawali (musical chorus) on the theme of caste harmony kept the crowds engaged through the five hours they waited for the BSP leader. In an enchanting mixture of awdhi and bhojpuri, the qawals, by turn sang paeans to sarvajan (all social groups) unity. Qawali over, little Saurav Misra reeled off names of Brahmins who had clambered on to the BSP bandwagon; he himself was one of them, he said proudly.

When Ms. Mayawati arrived, it was to frenzied shouts of "Behen Mayawati zindabad; sarva samaj zindabad (hail Mayawati, hail all social groups.) And with the audience standing on its feet clapping, she unveiled her new slogan: "Haathi nahi Ganesh hai; Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai (it is not elephant but Ganesh; it is Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh)."

The BSP chief did not once utter the word manuwad. The emphasis instead was on sarvajan. People accused the BSP of narrow-mindedness but its choice of candidates proved how utterly wrong they were, she said, reading from the party list: 139 candidates from the forward castes, among them 86 Brahmins, up from 37 in 2002. Ms. Mayawati asked to know if any other party had done even half as much for the forward castes. Indeed, in Rae Bareli, she threw a sharp taunt at the Congress. The Congress was supposedly a party of Brahmins: "But consider the irony. The party has not fielded a single Brahmin candidate in this entire region."

The BSP feels the Congress' neglect of Brahmins in this region will work to its advantage. And the man implementing the BSP project is Satish Chandra Misra. The party general secretary and the brain behind its Brahmin jodo abhiyan, Mr. Misra has been heli-hopping across the State, seeking Brahmin votes for the BSP. For Brahmins brought up to view the BSP with suspicion, Mr. Misra's high-profile presence in the party is a huge reassurance. That he has a helicopter all to himself is a talking point in the Brahmin-dominated villages of Amethi and Rae Bareli. Brahmins here acknowledge their close bond with the Gandhi parivar, yet say they feel let down by the Congress. Coming at such a time, the BSP attention is naturally welcome, and Mr. Misra has cashed in on this by flying more than once into the Amethi-Rae Bareli belt.

Aware of the damage this can do to the Congress, the family has been harping on unity. At her rallies, Ms. Vadra tells voters not to be swayed by caste feelings. "We got freedom because Gandhiji united us. Your future lies in remaining united behind the Congress." The family's strength is its pan-Indian appeal. Yet the Gandhi magic has thus far worked only in the Lok Sabha elections. If the Gandhis can change the pattern, they will have pulled off a coup.

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