It is a Sunday afternoon. Sitting with two colleagues and scrolling through his social media feed, Amethi district Congress president Pradeep Singhal says he is confident Rahul Gandhi will again contest from the seat. And, five years after he lost the family seat to the BJP's Smriti Irani, Singhal says: “He will win.” Barring the three, the district Congress committee office – more like a re-fashioned shop space — at Gauriganj in Amethi is empty. There is a larger central Congress office next to it, but it is deserted, just over a month before Amethi votes in the fifth phase, May 20. Singhal suddenly stops his social media scrolling as he chances upon the “massive turnout” for the nomination filing by a candidate in Banswara in Rajasthan. “Look at the crowd!” he exclaims. “He (the candidate) is on a camel.” His colleague Sarvesh Kumar Singh hesitatingly points out that the candidate Singhal mistook for the Congress nominee belongs to “some Adivasi party” (the Bharat Adivasi Party’s Rajkumar Roat). The two reluctantly return to the Amethi campaign. To questions as to why Rahul has not been declared the candidate yet, Singh says the announcement will come as soon as voting in Wayanad – the constituency in Kerala from where the Congress leader won in 2019 and is re-contesting – is over on April 26. But it is just a speculation, with no official reason on offer for the delay; the filing of nominations begins in a fortnight. Contrary to the listless Congress office, the BJP's located a few kilometres away is buzzing – the party has built new structures in both Amethi and Raebareli. Irani, who has been re-fielded by the BJP, is scheduled to arrive the next day, her second visit to the constituency since the announcement of the election schedule. BJP district president Ram Prasad Mishra lists Irani’s “achievements” – the Amethi bypass project; a medical college in Tiloi; a trauma centre in Jagdishpur; a Coca-Cola subsidiary’s bottling plant. Above all, Mishra says, Irani is now “a resident of Amethi”. In February, she performed a house-warming ceremony for the house she has bought in Gauriganj. The BJP is underlining this, as well as the fact that Irani is also a voter from Amethi now – contrasting this to Rahul, who is contesting again from Wayanad. 2024 vs 2019 The 2024 battle in many ways has an echo of 2019. The Congress's main pitch is still the Gandhi family and its “contributions” to Amethi, such as the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi, Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, and the Footwear Design and Development Institute. The BJP, in turn, blames them for the region’s “pre-2019” backwardness despite the seat’s VIP tag. Rahul won the seat thrice between 2004 and 2014, and before that it was held by Sonia Gandhi. Even Congress sympathisers say Rahul paid the price for not visiting Amethi enough, and then opting to contest from a second seat. There has been no visible course-correction, with Rahul visiting Amethi just four times in the last five years – in December 2021 and February 2022 to campaign for the 2022 Assembly elections, and in February this year, when his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra passed through the constituency and Raebareli. The 2022 Assembly results did not augur well for the Congress either. Of the five segments in Amethi, three were won by the BJP and two by the Samajwadi Party. Both the SP MLAs – Rakesh Pratap Singh (Gauriganj) and Maharaji Prajapati (Amethi) – are now in the BJP. The SP and Congress are allies this time, though as per SP leaders' own admission, they have not held any coordination meetings so far. SP district president Ram Udit Yadav says their own preparations are on track. “We have been holding meetings from the booth to the district level.” On the SP leaders who joined the BJP, Yadav says: “The party has not suffered one bit, only emerged stronger.” A shopkeeper in Gauriganj, who remains a loyal Rahul voter, admits the Congress leader continues to let Amethi drift away. “Even if he doesn’t do much. an MP should be in the constituency often.” Another leader says: “Rahul, or for that matter any leader, can’t just file his nomination, wave at the people and vanish. Woh zamana chala gaya (Those times are gone).” The other seat In Raebareli, the BJP and Congress are almost in the same boat, waiting for their candidates. The stock reply of supporters is: “Let the candidates be announced. Phir pata chalega kaisi takkar hoti hai (Then we will know what kind of a fight it is).” However, unlike Amethi, there is a semblance of action at Tilak Bhawan, the Congress office in Raebareli, even at 7 pm on a Saturday – uncommon for the laid-back party. Sonia, who won the seat in 2019, has bowed out of the electoral race, and the buzz is that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will make her electoral debut from Raebareli. While the Congress is yet to reveal its cards, a section of the BJP is apprehensive about the names that might fall out when the party opens its own. Two of those in contention are Dinesh Pratap Singh, a minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, who was the BJP's candidate in 2019 and lost to Sonia by over 1.67 lakh votes; and Manoj Pandey, who recently crossed over from the SP. A section of the party believes only a candidate from “outside” – like Irani in Amethi - stands a chance against Priyanka. “The party will not be completely united if Singh or Pandey contests,” a leader says. Pandey's exit though is set to hurt the SP-Congress alliance. In the 2022 Assembly elections, the SP had won all but one of the five Assembly segments falling under the Raebareli Lok Sabha seat, with the Congress drawing a blank. The only seat won by the BJP was the Raebareli Assembly segment. Here again, while the SP is confident of transferring its votes to the Congress, there have been no coordination meetings. “Akhilesh (Yadav) ji had a meeting and we were clearly told to ensure proper coordination with the Congress,” says Raebareli SP district president Virendra Yadav. At the Congress office, as a group of old-timers discuss politics, the talk veers around to Priyanka's husband Robert Vadra, who has been making noises about wanting to contest. They rule out the possibility, asserting the candidate will be Priyanka. In his room, Congress city president Dheeraj Srivastava and a colleague are supervising feeding of data in a computer on booth agents. Asked whether he has been sounded out by the Congress regarding Priyanka, Srivastava says: “Bataya nahin gaya hai. par vishwas hai woh aayengi (We have not been told, but we are confident she will make her debut).” Compared to the faded Congress office, the BJP's is in a newly built multi-storey building, a few kilometers away. And the keyboards are clicking fast here as well. Local BJP leader Pushpendra Singh is working out a schedule for mandal-level “nukkad sabhas (corner meetings)”, starting from Friday. Unlike in Amethi, where even Congress sympathisers struggle with Rahul’s “absence”, in Raebareli, voters say they understand, citing sitting MP Sonia’s fragile health. Since winning in 2019, her fourth victory in a row from Raebareli, Sonia has visited only once – a month after the results. The issues Both in Amethi and Raebareli, issues like the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, the Opposition’s demand for a caste census or, for that matter, Rahul's Yatra that crossed the region just two months ago are not top of mind. More common is the mention of “the use of ED and CBI” by the Modi government, though sarcastically in the context of leaders switching sides What comes up most often is the Centre's popular free ration scheme. Is unemployment, one of the Congress's main poll issues and part of its manifesto, a concern? For some it is. Standing outside a coaching institute with his friends, Satyendra Lodh, 18, elaborates the problem with asking the BJP questions. “BJP hamesha palatwar karti hai. Paani bharna hai toh balti leke kuen ke paas hi jayenge na? Kuan thodi na bolta hai taalab mein pani nahin hai. Sawal toh sarkar se hi poocha jata hai (The BJP is always ready with a counter. If one needs water, one will go to the well, isn't it? The well can't say, 'But the pond has no water'. Questions can only be asked of the government).”
