While Rahul Gandhi was widely feted on Tuesday for the Congress win in the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat by-poll, what came as a rude jolt to the party leadership was that the AICC general secretary had failed to deliver in the high-stakes Bundelkhand region, despite a high-voltage campaign for ?development?.
The Congress came in third in Bundelkhand?s Lalitpur and Jhansi constituencies which were among those that saw by-elections. The Jhansi seat had been vacated by Jain after he was elected to the Lok Sabha. The first-term MP was sought to be projected as the party?s face in the region as he was appointed Union minister of state for rural development.
The Jhansi by-poll results, however, came as a huge dampener for the Congress which, under Rahul?s stewardship, hoped to make political capital out of the backwardness of the Bundelkhand region. On a visit to Bundelkhand in early 2008, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family had brought the parched region into national political discourse by highlighting the lack of development there.
Rahul has made several trips to the region since then, including his four-day whirlwind tour in April 2008 when his night stay at a Dalit?s house invited angry remarks from BSP chief Mayawati. Jain?s unexpected victory from Jhansi in the last Lok Sabha elections seemed to validate Rahul?s focus on the region. It caused enough anxiety in the BSP camp for Mayawati to nominate two backward leaders from Bundelkhand, Gangacharan Rajput and Sriram Pal, to the Rajya Sabha last June.
In July 2008, the Congress raised the political stakes with Rahul leading a delegation of Congress leaders to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to demand the creation of a separate Bundelkhand Development Authority.
While such an authority, as per law, cannot be created without the consent of the state government concerned, Mayawati played into the Congress?s hands, or so the ruling party leaders at the Centre believed, by opposing the move. This gave the Congress a handle to target the BSP regime in the state. Before the Jhansi by-poll shock, the party was planning to hold a series of demonstrations and other agitational programmes in the Bundelkhand region.
In an embarrassment for the party, UPCC spokesman Vijay Khaira, who hails from Bundelkhand region, resigned, blaming Pradeep Jain for supporting the nomination of weak candidates in the by-polls. ?The party candidate that we nominated could not carry the cadres along. People in Bundelkhand are still with Rahulji and the party, but they did not accept our candidate,? said Joshi.