India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was all but written off after his crushing defeat in the last elections. But he has energised a struggling Congress party and increasingly set the agenda with a combative campaign. The BBC’s Geeta Pandey visits his constituency to assess whether he can unseat the prime minister this time.
The main roads in the small town of Amethi were choked with supporters when Rahul Gandhi turned up to file his nomination papers last week.
Mr Gandhi – smiling and waving on an open truck, accompanied by his sister Priyanka – was greeted all along the 3km route to the district collector’s office by party workers. Many waved flags, others carried their photographs and town residents showered them with rose petals.
A man in a horse costume danced to drum beats, a brass band played welcoming tunes and groups of supporters ran alongside the convoy shouting slogans in his support.
“Mr Modi’s days are numbered,” says Mustaqim Ahmed, who has travelled 125km (78 miles) from his village with his 12-year-old son to see the Congress chief.
Anokhelal Tiwari, a resident of Amethi, adds: “Wait and see, once the votes are counted on 23 May, Mr Modi will known as the ex-prime minister of India. The Congress will form the next government and ‘Rahul bhaiya [brother]’ will become the prime minister.”
It’s a dream Mr Gandhi’s supporters in Amethi have had for a long time. In fact, ever since he made his political debut 15 years ago.
The 48-year-old is a three-term MP from this town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. He is now seeking a fourth term. This time though, he’s also standing in Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala – leading to the BJP alleging he’s scared of losing Amethi to their candidate Smriti Irani, who put up a tough fight in 2014. Congress leaders have defended the move, saying it will help widen their base in the south.
I followed Mr Gandhi’s campaigns closely in 2004, 2009 and 2014 – and each time I was told by supporters they were electing the PM, not an MP. That sentiment is now being echoed in Wayanad too, says my BBC Hindi colleague Imran Qureshi, who’s covering the election there.
That’s because Rahul Gandhi has the right pedigree: he is the scion of India’s political royalty.
His great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first prime minister of independent India, his grandmother and father also served as prime ministers, while his mother, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, was the Congress chief until poor health forced her to hand over the reins to her son 16 months ago.
Even before that, there never was any doubt that he was being groomed for the top job. In 2013, he was elevated to the second most senior position in the party and campaigned extensively in the 2014 general election.
So when Congress suffered its most humiliating defeat that year, winning just 44 seats in the 545-member parliament, his political career hit rock bottom.
For a while after that, nothing seemed to be going right for him or the Congress.
The party faced electoral setbacks in several state elections; he was seen as “remote and inaccessible” and critics and rivals ridiculed him on social media as a bumbling, clueless leader prone to gaffes. Narendra Modi, who comes from a humble background, repeatedly criticised him for rising to the top not on merit, but because of belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
But then things began to change: Mr Gandhi started to emerge from the shadows, his social media campaigns became smarter and he began arguing convincingly about the government’s controversial currency ban, a lack of employment opportunities, growing intolerance in the country and the slowdown in the economy.
The proverbial cherry on the cake came in December when he led the Congress to victory in important state elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
And now, as he traverses the length and breadth of the country, addressing up to five rallies daily, his campaign is beginning to get some traction.
Senior journalist Aarthi Ramachandran, author of a 2012 book on Mr Gandhi, says he’s displayed leadership potential on the campaign trail by consistently taking a stand against Mr Modi, demanding answers from the government on alleged corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal and arguing forcefully that the currency ban hit people’s lives hard.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47978944