‘Memories of Rajiv came back’: Rahul stops by & a village gets nostalgic about his father’s visit

People of Narsi village recall PM Rajiv Gandhi's visit 31 yrs ago. He had come to address a public meeting as part of the 1991 Lok Sabha poll campaign. He had died the next day.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with padayatris during the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra, in Nanded. | ANI

Nanded: As Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reached Narsi village in Maharashtra’s Nanded district as part of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, 59-year-old Gangadhar Patil Bhilavde, a resident of the village, recalls when former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and Rahul’s father, had arrived there on 20 May, 1991, to attend a public meeting.

He was assassinated the next day during a poll rally in Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur.

Rahul Gandhi visited Narsi village in the drought-prone Nanded district of the state’s Marathwada region Wednesday.

“My memories of the Rajiv Gandhi meeting came back after seeing Rahul Gandhi. Rahul visited the same village 30 years later. His family has sacrificed for the country. I was happy to see him,” an emotional Bhilavde told ThePrint.

The Congress had launched its 3,500 km Bharat Jodo Yatra from Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari on 7 September this year. The yatra plans to cover 12 states in about five months. The party’s outreach entered Maharashtra this week, where it will touch 15 Assembly and six Parliamentary constituencies.

The 1991 Rajiv Gandhi rally

The former PM was in the village as part of the party’s general election campaign for four Lok Sabha constituencies — Hingoli, Nanded, Parbhani, and Latur — as villagers of Narsi recall.

The 1991 general elections were necessitated after the National Front coalition government led by V.P. Singh fell with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) withdrawing its support as Singh stopped BJP leader L.K. Advani’s rath yatra, which was the part of its Ayodhya or Ram Janmabhoomi campaign.

Recalling the meeting, Bhilavde said that the former PM was scheduled to arrive by 12.30 pm but was late by over two hours. His helicopter had landed right behind the stage and as soon as he got off the helicopter, he apologised, Bhilavde says.

The meeting that Rajiv Gandhi addressed in our village was packed with people, said Bhilavde. “The atmosphere for Congress in 1991 was different,” he said. Notably, Nanded has been a Congress stronghold. Nationalist Congress Party leader, Sharad Pawar, who was then in the Indian National Congress, was the Maharashtra chief minister at the time.

The voting for the first phase was held on 20 May, 1991, but later phases were postponed due to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. None of the parties got absolute majority but Congress fared better in the later two phases and bagged 232 of the 487 seats it contested in. Subsequently, P.V. Narasimha Rao became the Prime Minister.

Rahul Gandhi got ’emotional’

When we got to know last month that Rahul Gandhi would pass by our village, we decided to keep a portrait of his father and discussed the idea with the local Congress workers. We arranged a portrait and kept it in the same chowk where the former PM had addressed the public meeting, Bhilavde says.

Although Rahul Gandhi did not address a rally in the village, he briefly stopped at the village to pay floral tributes to his father’s portrait.

Congress member Rajiv Gandigude (60), who is participating in the Maharashtra-leg of the yatra, said that Rahul Gandhi stopped at Narsi to offer tributes to the portrait and moved ahead with the yatra. “I was standing very close to him [Rahul Gandhi]… he got emotional seeing the portrait of his father.”

Another villager, Sayyad Isaaq said, “I feel he (Rahul Gandhi) is walking in the footsteps of Rajiv Gandhi. He is also meeting people in his padyatra.”