New Delhi: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi joined the campaign trail for the Delhi assembly elections Tuesday after staying absent for the bulk of its duration.
For the Gandhi siblings, their rally at Delhi’s Sangam Vihar marked the first time they campaigned together outside of their family pocket boroughs of Rae Bareli, represented by their mother Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, and Amethi, which Rahul lost to BJP’s Smriti Irani last year, in Uttar Pradesh.
At the rally, Rahul and Priyanka sought to corner the Modi government on the issue of jobs, while taking swipes at the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as well.
Neither the BJP nor the AAP, Priyanka said, had addressed the issues that deserve the nation’s attention.
“Aap jab sab yahaan saare desh se aate hai naukri dhoondne, kya aapko picchle 5 saalon mein rozgar mila (you come from all over the country to find jobs here, did you find any in the past five years)?” she added.
Priyanka also took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his allegation that the Shaheen Bagh protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was not a coincidence (“sanyog”) but an experiment (“prayog”) to destroy the nation’s harmony.
She then referred to a recent report that purportedly said 3.5 crore jobs were lost in seven sectors under the past five years of the Modi government.
“When the PM comes to give a speech in front of you, he does not even make a mention of it,” she added.
Priyanka also hit out at the BJP and the AAP for “spending crores of rupees on publicity”. “The PM invests crores of rupees on publicity, (Arvind) Kejriwal is not far behind. What is the need for publicity if work is doing the talking?” she said, adding that the AAP was claiming credit for work done by Congress CM Sheila Dikshit.
Dikshit, who died last year, led Delhi as chief minister for three consecutive terms before the Congress found itself decimated in the national capital in 2015.
Rahul, meanwhile, said the country’s leadership were busy spewing hatred and creating an environment of violence across the nation instead of tackling the ongoing slowdown.
“They (BJP) talk about the Hindu dharma, they talk about Islam, they talk of Sikhism. They have no knowledge of religions. In Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism — where is it written that attack other people, suppress them?” he said.
He added that he felt sorry for the youth, who “work hard to study, pass out of school, go to high school, attend college, but are left with no jobs”. “Modi and Kejriwal have failed them,” he added.
Youngsters who fail to get jobs, he said, should not blame themselves. “It’s not your fault, but the PM’s fault,” he added.
Training his guns on Kejriwal, he took a potshot at the “deshbhakti (patriotism) curriculum” introduced by his administration in government schools last year.
Those who preach deshbhakti, he said, haven’t been able to stand by the students and college-goers in the country.
‘Modi selling everything’
Apart from the rally with Priyanka, Rahul addressed another one in the Jangpura area earlier in the day.
“PM Modi coined a good slogan ‘Make in India’ but did not set up a single factory in UP’s Agra,” he said there, adding, “He [Modi] is selling everything, he might one day even sell the Taj Mahal.
The Congress’ campaign has been slow to start as compared to those of the BJP and the AAP, with PM Modi sounding the poll bugle on behalf of the former as far back as December.
It was only Monday that the party deployed its first popular leader, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, on the campaign trail.
Apart from Rahul and Priyanka’s rallies, former PM Manmohan Singh also addressed a public meeting at Rajouri Garden.
Congress working president Sonia Gandhi, who is reportedly unwell, is expected to address meetings Wednesday in the last phase of the party’s campaign.
Sources in the Congress told ThePrint that there had been dozens of proposals from within the party to get Priyanka and Rahul to join the campaign.
Also read Behind Congress’ lifeless Delhi campaign — disinterest, infighting, shortage of funds
Kejriwal for Delhi – no doubt about it. But there are 2 reasons to not write off the Gandhi siblings at the national level – 1. their unwavering opposition to forces of bigotry and 2. they still appeal to a sizable number of Indians – hard to find other faces outside BJP who have such pan-India recognition and pull.