Campaigning in her brother Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday asked party workers to reach out to the villages and expose what she called was the BJP’s “jumlebazi” or empty rhetoric.
Ms. Priyanka Gandhi, who arrived in Amethi via Lucknow to hold a dialogue with the booth-level presidents as part of the party’s “humara booth, humara gaurav” campaign, remained closeted with representatives of Amethi for around two hours at the A H Inter College in Musafirkhana.
This marked the beginning of the second phase of her election campaign in Uttar Pradesh.
Clad in a blue cotton sari, microphone in her hand, the Congress leader took centrestage among local leaders, taking feedback from them. The Amethi constituency has long remained a Congress stronghold.
In the interactive session, Ms. Priyanka Gandhi told workers to reach out to villages in order to respond to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘jumlebazi’ and “expose the reality before the people”.
Party workers who attended the meeting, later said, Ms. Priyanka Gandhi patiently heard ways to effectively reach out to the party’s booth-level.
Till we take the failures of the government to the people, they will not come to know the reality of this government, she told workers.
The Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern districts said people and Amethi have suffered a lot because of demonetisation, stray cattle menace, stopping MNREGS and snatching of a food park and the Indian Institute of Information Technology.
She said it was during the Congress’ rule the country achieved expertise in manufacturing matchboxes to missiles, whereas Prime Minister Narendra Modi was merely undertaking foreign trips even as farmers faced immense problems and were not even getting proper return for their produce.
She accused Mr. Modi of not fulfilling his “promise” of depositing ₹15 lakh each into every Indian’s account.
She said the Congress party does what it says, pointing out that farm loans were waived soon after the Rajasthan government was formed.
The Congress leader said her party had promised to give ₹72,000 yearly to poor families and will show how the scheme works.
She assured the people that Amethi was like family and home for the Gandhis and that Mr. Rahul will contest the election from here.
Speaking on BJP nominee Smriti Irani being pitted against her brother, Ms. Priyanka Gandhi said the Union Minister comes to Amethi for “time pass” as she had nothing to do with the constituency whereas she herself had been coming here since childhood with her father.
Ms. Priyanka Gandhi, who had undertaken a river route to visit some riverine constituencies earlier this month, said on her visit to Varanasi she had found no development work had taken place and the people were very unhappy.
Ms. Priyanka Gandhi will be interacting with the booth-level presidents of four more Assembly constituencies holding a direct conversation with them and passing on vital inputs in preparation for the coming polls before taking a night halt at Rae Bareli where she will hold similar meetings on March 28.
She is scheduled to visit Ayodhya on March 29.
