Rahul Gandhi may face humiliating loss in long-held seat of family power

By Rajeev Sharma

It could be the mother of all upsets - top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi losing Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, the Lok Sabha constituency that has returned a Gandhi family member uninterruptedly since 1980.

Such an electoral upset would be a bitter irony, as Rahul is the party's driving force who has been tirelessly and virtually single-handedly taking on a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

The BJP has got "encouraging" reports from Amethi suggesting that for the first time in over three decades a Gandhi family member is on a slippery wicket in this pocket borough and it has a decent chance to inflict a humiliating defeat to the Congress top leader who is deemed to be a prime ministerial candidate.

For this reason the entire top brass of the BJP descended on Amethi on Sunday and Monday for carpet bombing Amethi with poll campaign in favor of their TV actor-turned-politician candidate Smriti Irani. Amethi went to polls on Wednesday.

But none mattered more than Modi. Such has become the state of affairs with the BJP, a party that traditionally had a bunch of leaders at the top but now has a sole poster boy. Minutes before campaigning there ended on Monday evening, Modi addressed an election rally at Amethi. His sole mission objective was to tear into the entire Gandhi clan, living and dead.

Like a Rambo, he fired indiscriminately at all the Gandhis, Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka. He did not even spare former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed by a suicide bomber in 1991.

Modi campaigning in Amethi goes against an unspoken code wherein major political parties do not send their star campaigners to the constituencies of their top rivals.

But this election is an unprecedentedly no-holds-barred contest for all parties, particularly the BJP and Congress, who are leaving no stone unturned to woo the voters.

The BJP's assessment of Amethi is not far off the mark. There is widespread disgruntlement and even disenchantment with Rahul for the people of Amethi. The constituency still does not have basic amenities like water and power even though India's first family has held the seat since 1980.

Bridges half-completed for seven years, poor roads, electricity outages, water shortage, inadequate health and educational facilities are only some of the complaints that Rahul is facing from many of the 1.5 million Amethi voters. Another charge against Rahul from local voters is that he is hardly accessible and his visits to the constituency have been few and far between.

The new anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which otherwise has become a fringe player in these elections, happens to be a powerful presence in Amethi.

AAP candidate Kumar Vishwas has been camping in this constituency for months and has visited its remotest areas where Rahul has never been. Political observers feel that AAP will eat into a chunk of traditional Congress voter base, particularly the sizeable number of Muslims.

Yet Congress ship in Amethi has been steadied by Rahul's sister Priyanka who has been camping in the constituency for weeks. In many ways BJP candidate Smriti Irani is more pitted against Priyanka than Rahul.

Though the BJP smells a chance of defeating Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, it remains to be seen whether the BJP can pull off such a sensational political coup. But one thing seems certain: Even if Rahul does win, it will be by embarrassingly less than the huge victory margin of over 364,000 votes he notched up in 2009, when all his rivals lost their deposit.