Amethi votes...: Rahul Gandhi battles for seat as election end nears

Objects to BJP election symbol outside polling station.

AMETHI:

Beleaguered Rahul Gandhi, battling to save India’s ruling Congress party in national elections, sought to win over sceptical voters in his constituency on Wednesday as voting in the world’s biggest democracy entered its final stages.

Gandhi, the scion of India’s most famous political dynasty whose lacklustre leadership of the Congress election campaign has drawn criticism, travelled to his northern parliamentary seat to witness voting first-hand.

He toured polling booths in Amethi – his family’s bastion for more than 30 years, which sent both his mother and late father to parliament – and told reporters that local people were “expressing their love for me”.

The challenge facing Gandhi was underscored this week when opposition frontrunner Narendra Modi held a rally in Amethi and declared that nothing could save the dynasty.

Modi, a Hindu nationalist hardliner who has campaigned on reviving the flagging economy, urged voters to “break ties with the family” that has produced three prime ministers.

Gandhi’s presence in Amethi on Wednesday was interpreted in the local media as a sign of concern due to competition from the BJP candidate, former actress Smriti Irani, and a popular anti-corruption campaigner and poet, Kumar Vishwas.

Day of complaining

Rahul Gandhi complained to the Election Commission on Wednesday after spotting a lotus—election symbol of the opposing Bharatiya Janata Party—sketched outside a polling booth in Amethi, from where the Congress vice-president is contesting for the third time.

Gandhi raised objections at a lotus drawn with a chalk on a blackboard outside a polling station, a school in Phula village.

According to NDTV, Gandhi is touring his hometown after a decade.

The Congress leader too drew criticism from the Aam Admi Party for violating the model code of conduct by travelling with a large motorcade and supporters.

Party members tweeted several pictures of Gandhi in polling booths.

One where he stood talking to some people accompanying a tweet that asked, “Does the election commission allow candidates to stand and chat inside polling stations?” Another picture showed him looking at an Electronic Voting Machine. AAP tweeted, “Is the candidate allowed to go to the polling machine?”

Early on Wednesday morning, the party complained against Gandhi for moving around in a large motorcade. “We have complained to the Election Commission, he was using 24 cars,” said Kumar Vishwas, the party’s candidate against Rahul.

Meanwhile, the constituency’s third major player, Smriti Irani, the BJP candidate, complained about the presence of Prinyanka Gandhi’s political secretary Preeti Sahay at an Amethi polling booth.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2014.