Orange city dons tricolour to welcome Rahul Gandhi

Maiden visit aims to instill confidence among party workers in the run up to Lok Sabha elections

Surabardi village, about 20 km away from the airport here, wore a festive look on Tuesday. The roads were lined with Congress banners welcoming party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Youth party leaders, district party chiefs and the party’s rank and file from the 10 parliamentary constituencies of Vidarbha and the eight Lok Sabha seats of Marathwada all seemed busy.

At Surabardi, located along the Nagpur-Amravati highway, Congress workers and villagers waited since morning to catch a glimpse of Rahul Gandhi. However, owing to security reasons, the area was cordoned off by the police and the state reserve police force. Only vehicles with authorised passes issued by the police, as well those of Congress party members, were allowed entry.

At 10.50 am, about an hour and a half behind schedule, Rahul Gandhi’s 50-car cavalcade arrived at the venue. In a departure from the norm, Gandhi wasn’t in his bullet-proof Tata Safari but was driven from the airport in an off-white Innova. Accompanied by Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Gandhi waved at workers and villagers.

Speaking to Business Standard, Sachin Sawant, spokesperson for the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee, said, “Today’s exercise by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi aims at directly communicating with party workers, especially those working at the ground level, understanding their problems and taking appropriate measures to strengthen the party organisation. Rahulji has been travelling across the country. Recently, he had been to Mumbai. He would travel to Pune on Wednesday.”

A party worker from Hingna taluka, said the Congress party was a source of strength for him, as well as the others in his locality. “Rahul is working hard for the betterment of the party and as a first-time voter, I want the Congress to win the ensuing general elections.”

Kamal Sonawane, 30, accompanied by his husband and her five-year-old son, was desperate to secure entry into the road to the meeting venue. Though her attempts to convince the police failed, she wasn’t deterred. “The Congress is a nationwide party and has done a lot for the empowerment of youth and women, especially in changing the lives of people in rural areas,” she said.

Surabardi was chosen as the venue for the meeting at a time when the Vidarbha region had recorded excess rainfall, with floods damaging crops in several areas. As such, the meeting provided party workers a chance to seek Rahul Gandhi’s intervention for assistance from the central government. A fortnight earlier, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had visited the flood-affected villages in the region.

Though Vidarbha has been a traditional vote bank for the Congress, through the years, the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance has posed a challenge here.