Rahul Gandhi’s mere presence seemed enough to pull massive crowds to the Congress’ Kisan-Khet Mazdoor Rally here on Sunday.
Even as the soaring mercury indicated the onset of a blistering Delhi summer, the party’s apparent bid to project a united, pan-India front against the Central Government’s Land Acquisition ordinance, according to police estimates, brought between 50,000 to 70,000 people to the venue. The party, however, claimed a footfall of 1.5 lakh.
The stage at Central Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan was occupied by the who’s who of the party, including Mr. Gandhi, party national president Sonia, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Digvijaya Singh, Bhupender Singh Hooda, Captain Amarinder Singh and Ajay Maken among others.
Meanwhile, the ground was brimming with supporters – wearing varying headgear ranging from pink pagdis that adorned the heads of Haryana farmers to white Gandhi caps bearing the Tricolour that was being sported by those from Uttar Pradesh.
However, pink turbans that showed the organising power of Haryana Chief Minister Hooda seemed to outnumber the saffron variety being worn by Amarinder Singh’s supporters.
Both the regional satraps, who were understood to be on the brink of exiting the party earlier this year, according to a senior party source, wanted “the leadership to know their precise contribution to the crowd of attendees in a friendly contest”.
Even as its organisers patted themselves on the back citing the BJP’s “poor show” at a similar rally held in West Delhi earlier this week, many attendees, the police said, had to be disallowed from entering the premises mainly to prevent a contingency triggered due to possible crowd-mismanagement.
Senior party leaders claimed farmers from Haryana, UP, Punjab, Telengana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and from each of the seven North East Indian States had marched to the Capital for the said rally. Similar events have been planned across the country in the coming days to project Mr. Gandhi as the harbinger of its not-so-new commitment to land rights. #rahulrally and #pappufarce began trending on Twitter almost simultaneously before the former overtook the latter.
“To be honest, I came here to see Rahul ji just like he had come to see the condition of farmers like me at Bhatta Parsaul,” said Satbir Singh from the Greater Noida village where protests against the State Government’s land acquisition policy had erupted in 2011. These were followed by Mr. Gandhi’s much-publicised visit to it riding pillion on a local resident’s motorcycle.
“Around 50 of us had met him yesterday at his residence, too; we came today because we had promised him we wouldn’t let the country forget his attempt at drawing attention to our small village when we needed it,” he added as chants of the Congress vice-president’s name drowned his voice out.
Padyatras and awareness drives aiming to “educate farmers about the draconian amendments to the Land Bill” by Indian Youth Congress (IYC) volunteers across a majority of the 4100 Assembly segments located in North India over the last three months was credited as having been “a significant crowd-generation tool” by party sources.
Linda Kangpokpi, a worker from Manipur, said she saw “new hope” in her party’s return to issues regarding land rights even as Mr. Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for veiling his “pro-industrialist agenda” with the ‘Make in India’ initiative. The party’s Delhi unit, led by its former Union Minister chief Mr. Maken who had engineered three road shows for Mr. Gandhi and a rally for Ms. Sonia Gandhi in the run-up to the Delhi elections earlier this year, had been given the primary responsibility of organising the event.
As many as ten sub-committees were formed directly under Mr. Maken to deal with, and tide over, modalities and technicalities pertaining to the massive meet which, an insider said, had been “in the works for over two weeks.”
“This is a comeback rally in as many as respects: Mr. Gandhi’s return to the country, his return to active politics and the party’s return to the centre-stage as a pro-farmer political formation,” said a senior leader.
Suraj Rathi from Sonepat beamed as he tied a pink turban to a giggling attendee from the North East. “Haryana or UP or the North East -- it doesn’t matter where we have come from and what we look like. That all of us are here is enough to prove that the farmers’ woes, and hopefully solution for their problems, can be worked as long as we work together.”
To be honest, I came here to see Rahul ji just like he had come to see the condition of farmers like me at Bhatta Parsaul in 2011
Satbir Singh
Farmer
