Gandhi had last campaigned in Varanasi in 2016, which she had to abandon mid-way after falling ill on the road.
New Delhi: Congress leader Sonia Gandhi made a comeback on the campaign trail after a gap of about two years. Gandhi addressed a rally at Vijaypura Tuesday ahead of the upcoming hotly contested Karnataka elections.
Considering that Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath have all flown down to the state to campaign for the BJP, Karnataka is too important for Sonia and her party to give it a miss.
Sonia skipped campaigning in several state elections including Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand elections in 2017, and Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland elections in 2018.
Varanasi
Gandhi held her last election road show at Varanasi on 2 August 2016. However, she fell ill midway and had to cut short her campaign. This was also the first time Sonia Gandhi had visited Varanasi since Prime Minister Modi had contested and won the elections there.
On her incomplete Varanasi visit, Gandhi was supposed to point out several flaws of the Modi government, including its failure particularly in the Uttar Pradesh city. She had planned to take on Modi government on the rising inflation rate and the communal tensions in the state. However, during the middle of the road show when she was passing by Lahurabir town, she reportedly felt dehydrated and was rushed to Delhi by air.
Dard-e-Banaras
Gandhi’s campaign was called ‘Dard-e-Banaras’ with the slogan “27 saal UP behal, abki baar sabki sarkar (For 27 years, UP was helpless, this time it’ll have to be everyone’s government).” During the campaign, she was accompanied by Congress chief-ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit, actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar and Rajya Sabha’s leader of opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad.
She had begun the 8-km long road show by garlanding the statue of B.R. Ambedkar. A sea of Congress supporters were waiting to great the leader and her 50-car cavalcade. After the campaign, she had to perform an ‘aarti’ at the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi.
UP election results
Congress performed poorly in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and was able to win only 7 seats out of the total 105 it had contested.
Sonia Gandhi had herself stood for elections in 1999 from Karnataka’s Ballari and had won against BJP stalwart Sushma Swaraj. The Congress is hoping she can create the same impact again ahead of the Karnataka elections.