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Journalism of Courage
Sitting with other Congress leaders around a large wooden table, Amit Mishra, the secretary of the party’s city committee, says he is hurt that Rahul Gandhi did not get out of his jeep when the recent Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra wound its way through Raebareli town.
“Aap pariwar ka rishta kehte hain par (The Gandhis call us family and yet)… Rahul was welcomed at 29 spots in Rae Bareli, he could have stepped out of his vehicle at any of these places,” he says.
As some of the veterans talk fondly of the Gandhi family and how Raebareli has always voted “emotionally”, Mishra is visibly uneasy.
And then, he spells out what frames the Congress’s biggest challenge in this party pocket borough: “Raebareli mein party workers ko attention chahiye… Emotions ki bhi umra hoti hai (The party workers in Raebareli want attention. Even emotions have a shelf life).”
With the Congress announcing its first list of candidates for 29 Lok Sabha seats, Raebareli and Amethi, the two seats that are considered the party’s pocket borough in the heartland, are still up in the air.
While Rahul Gandhi’s 2019 loss to Smriti Irani in Amethi still rankles, the party will be desperate to hold on to Raebareli – the only seat it won from the state in the 2019 elections. A win or loss here will determine the Congress’s future in the heartland and send out signals right down to the grassroots.
With Sonia Gandhi declaring herself unavailable for the Lok Sabha contest and the BJP determined to chip away the last vestiges of Congress influence here, cadres and other old-timers are aware that the road to Raebareli is unlikely to be a smooth one.
Which is why, as Mishra says, the party can’t afford to take chances. The discussion around the table at the office of the Congress leader picks up. Some party veterans pull out photographs of their relatives with Indira Gandhi; some share letters written by the former Prime Minister.
Some others, however, especially the younger lot around the table, are visibly upset that members of the Gandhi family haven’t been visiting the constituency, pointing out that the last time Sonia visited Raebareli was in January 2020, when she, along with Priyanka, came to offer condolences on the death of former MLA Ajay Pal’s son.
Kamlesh Dwivedi, 77, who is from a family of Congressmen, complains that “loyal faces” have been neglected. Showing a personal letter of thanks written by Indira in 1974 for the work he did for her election campaign, he says his father was a part of the delegation from Raebareli that had gone to convince Indira Gandhi to contest from here in 1967. Claiming to have been part of the delegation that convinced Sonia to contest from the constituency in 2004, he says, “Ab hum chahte hain Priyanka ayen (Now I want Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to contest from here)”.
At Dwivedi’s proposal, there are murmurs of agreement around the table.
Sitting inside a small shack where he sells paan and biscuits, Mata Prasad Pal, 73, calls himself an out and out “Congressi”, which gives him the “right to be upset with today’s Congress”.
“My entire family voted for the Congress, but if they lose, that’s their fault alone. Aana chod diye… dil dukha jata hai aadmi ka; aur kono baat nahi (They stopped coming. It hurts; there’s no other problem). If Indiraji were alive today… ,” he trails off, before quickly adding, “Sonia ki beti (Priyanka) should fight in her place.”
While district Congress leaders and old-timers such as Pal hope Priyanka’s presence will enthuse voters and cadres alike, the party realises that the ‘Indira’s granddaughter’ trump card may not enthuse a new generation born with no memory or recollection of Indira or the Congress’s heydays.
“Dekhte hain,” says Saumya Singh, a first-time voter and a first-year BTech student.
Hanging out with her friends on the campus of Feroze Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, which Sonia Gandhi inaugurated in 2004, Saumya, a first-time voter, is guarded about her electoral preferences, but adds, “The government’s free ration scheme is very good. It has helped the women in our village. My vote will depend on the candidate. I have yet to decide.”
An aspiring software engineer, she adds that with few jobs in Raebareli, she may have to move out to Lucknow after completing her course.
While the presence of the Gandhis lent Raebareli its VVIP sheen, the constituency has over the years struggled in terms of development, largely because it had to fight for land and clearances with non-Congress state governments.
While Sonia, who represented the constituency from 2004 to 2024, brought the Rail Coach Factory, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and National Institute of Pharmaceutical and Research (NIPER) to Raebareli, with the UPA shunted out of power in 2014, the projects either slowed down or the proposals never saw the light of day.
The effects of that political tussle is visible everywhere in Raebareli – in the dust and chaos from half-built flyovers, in the potholed roads and unfinished projects.
While Sonia inaugurated the temporary OPD of AIIMS Raebareli before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the building was inaugurated only last week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The fifth batch of MBBS students is about to graduate.
The country’s “first women’s university”, proposed during the UPA regime in 2013, never materialised after the Congress lost power at the Centre.
Successfully chosen as a so-called “safe seat” for Feroze Gandhi, Indira’s husband, in the 1952 and 1957 Lok Sabha elections, Raebareli shot to limelight after it was won by Indira in 1967, 1971 and 1980. A “VIP constituency” represented by the Prime Minister, it got projects that other districts in the state could only dream of.
Raebareli got its first college, Firoz Gandhi College, in 1960, during the term of its first MP, Firoz Gandhi. One of the most prominent projects from Indira’s time is the manufacturing unit of the Indian Telephone Industries Ltd, which manufactures fiber-optic cables. It has given temporary space to many units, including NIFT’s Raebareli centre, by giving them land on lease. When it was set up in 1973, residents said Indian Telephone Industries employed about 5,000 locals.
Despite the projects cleared by the Congress when in power, local BJP leaders are in no mood to grant the party any concessions.
“They brought these projects here in a hurry. It was the BJP government that completed them. Sonia never visited the constituency during her last term. There was no one to protest or fight for these incomplete projects,” says a BJP leader who didn’t want to be named.
Dismissing his remarks as “political vendetta”, Deepak Singh, former Congress MLC, says, “They (BJP) took five years to inaugurate AIIMS. Projects like the first women’s university in the country, the Spice Park and the City Resource Centre which our governments cleared have either been shelved or the work remains incomplete. Even work on the Raebareli Ring Road, which was sanctioned in 2012, remains incomplete.”
Over the years, the Congress has been losing not just votes but also its local leaders in Raebareli. Before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Dinesh Pratap Singh, a former Congress MLC, joined the BJP and contested against Sonia. He lost but was rewarded with a ministry in the Yogi government.
The Congress’s sitting MLA from Raebareli Sadar, Aditi Singh, joined the BJP ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls. Daughter of Akhilesh Singh, the six-term MLA from Raebareli who mainly won as an Independent, Aditi is today the lone BJP MLA from Raebareli. Four of the remaining Assembly seats — Bachchrawan, Harchandpur, Sareni and Unchahar — in the larger Lok Sabha constituency went to the Samajwadi Party in 2022.
Besides losing its local leaders, the Congress’s narrowing victory margins is also a cause for concern for the party — from a 3.72 lakh victory margin in 2009 to 3.52 lakh in 2014 and a mere 1.66 lakh in 2019, when Sonia defeated Dinesh Pratap Singh. While the Samajwadi Party has traditionally not fielded candidates against the Congress in Raebareli, when it does so in the Assembly elections, the Congress has steadily been losing ground.
Insisting that the blame lies at the Congress’s doorstep, Aditi Singh says, “It is wrong to call Raebareli a Congress seat. The Janata Party won once against Indira (in 1977, when Raj Narain humbled Indira Gandhi in the elections held after Emergency) and then my uncle Ashok Singh won twice from Raebareli Lok Sabha (1996 and 1998) as BJP candidate. It’s true that the seat has been represented by the Congress for long periods, but unfortunately it has nothing to show for it. The Gandhis may have not been in power for 10 years but that does not stop you from visiting or caring for your constituency. Sukh-dukh batiye, rishte nibhaiye (Share your happiness and sorrows; maintain your relationships).”
