Sonia Gandhi has never faced a ‘son of the soil’ in Rae Bareli. If she does, she will lose –– so claims Dinesh Pratap Singh, an MLC from the Congress who joined the BJP in the presence of
Amit Shah last year.
Dinesh shared the stage with Prime Minister
Narendra Modi when the latter held his maiden rally in Rae Bareli last month and many in this Gandhi bastion feel he is the front-runner for the BJP ticket from Rae Bareli in 2019. “It will be either Dinesh or a big face from outside. The PM and Amit Shah want to take the fight to Gandhi in Rae Bareli this time,” a senior BJP leader in UP told ET speaking on condition of anonymity. He said Dinesh was the “main Congress hand” in Rae Bareli and calls his joining the BJP as a “coup”. Sonia Gandhi has come to Rae Bareli only twice in the past three years given her ill health but her camp here says her win is a foregone conclusion despite what the BJP tries.
“If they put up Dinesh, it will be the easiest ever win for us. He has not even won an MLA election from Rae Bareli. He has lost all credibility after leaving the Congress which gave him everything,” KL Sharma, Gandhi’s representative in Rae Bareli told ET.
Priyanka Gandhi had earlier said that her mother will contest from Rae Bareli again in 2019.
Congress seems to be on a stronger wicket in Rae Bareli than in 2014 when Gandhi increased her votes and won by a record margin. While the Congress held none of the five assembly seats in 2014 in Rae Bareli, the party holds two now and came second on a third seat in the last assembly elections. But one of these Congress MLAs, Rakesh Singh, is the brother of MLC Dinesh Pratap Singh who has jumped ship. Rakesh has not quit the Congress yet but “at the end of the day, he is my brother,” says Dinesh.
The other Congress MLA is Aditi Singh. “The PM cannot just come here months before the elections and assume that the goodwill the Gandhis have here for decades will change overnight,” she told ET. Aditi has risen in prominence after
Rahul Gandhi recently appointed her National General Secretary of the
All India Mahila Congress. Much speculation was generated on Thursday when Aditi Singh’s father, Akhilesh Singh, went to Dinesh’s house in Rae Bareli to meet him but Dinesh called it just a courtesy visit.