Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday highlighted the decades old ties the Gandhi family shares with Amethi. Ms. Vadra requested voters to support the Congress candidate and described Amethi as her late father’s ‘karmabhoomi’ and her own ‘holy land’.
“The relation [between the Gandhi family and people of Amethi] is a holy bond, a relation of mutual respect and love; it is a bond of blood. Amethi is my father’s karmabhoomi and hence a holy land for me. The Congress Party has a decades old bond with this land and its people, whose intimacy always gives new energy to us. When I meet the people of Amethi, memories of the last four decades flash in my mind. This relationship will never break,” Ms. Vadra said, addressing a public meeting at Salon Assembly segment under Amethi district.
Without naming sitting MP Smriti Irani, the Congress leader added that the relationship between the Congress and the people of Amethi was such that even “2,000 false narratives” could not break those ties.
Ms. Vadra accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dispensation of doing injustice against the farmers, the youth, the poor, and the women.
“The farmers’ loans are not waived off but big industrialists keep enjoying loans from the government. The youth is unemployed, with paper leaks rampant in U.P. Unless paper leaks are stopped, common people and India cannot progress,” the former U.P. Congress in-charge said.
The Congress leader said that the BJP sought votes in the name of God instead of solutions for the fundamental issues concerning the people.
In the Amethi seat, Kishori Lal Sharma, an old trusted aide of the Gandhi family is facing Smriti Irani.
On May 3, after weeks of speculation and deliberations, the grand old party declared Rahul Gandhi as a candidate from the neighbouring Rae Bareli and Mr. Sharma from Amethi.
Mr. Gandhi had represented the seat three times before losing to Ms. Irani in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Ms. Irani had polled 4,68,514 against the Congress leader’s 4,13,394 votes in that election.
Mr. Gandhi is taking on Dinesh Pratap Singh in the neighbouring Rae Bareli which was the only seat won by the Congress from Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, with Sonia Gandhi having defeated Mr. Singh at the time.
