Sept 27, 1999

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As Sonia attempts to regain the dynasty's traditional seats she finds two formidable friends-turned-foes blocking her way.

By Ashok Malik and Subhash Mishra

Arun Nehru plonks himself on the front seat of his Tata Sumo and with a dramatic swish of the hand announces, "This week we're doing the block sweep. Next week it will be the cross sweep." You stare at him dumbfounded. What is he talking about? Rugby tackles? Nehru turns, his sly smile indicating he knows he's confused you: "It's an old method of campaigning. First you do the blocks in an assembly segment, then you drive across the district. That way you criss-cross the constituency ... They think you're around."

Within a few minutes of being with him, you've already noticed a couple of distinctive features about Nehru's election campaign. One, he loves jargon. Two, he has a weird sense of humour. Three, he's bloody confident.

Should Nehru be confident?

He was last elected Rae Bareli's MP in 1984. He's in a new party, having just joined the BJP after a prolonged semi-retirement. What's more, Sonia Gandhi, widow of Nehru's cousin Rajiv and rival custodian of a formidable political legacy, is leading the Congress charge in the Avadh area of Uttar Pradesh. This is the "family backyard" -- the Rae Bareli-Sultanpur-Amethi belt has sent six dynasty members to the Lok Sabha, some of them more than once. Sonia herself is standing from Amethi, her husband's constituency. Cousin Deepa Kaul has taken charge of Sultanpur. Rajiv's confidant Satish Sharma is the candidate from Rae Bareli. In 1998, Deepa stood from Rae Bareli and lost her deposit, as did her brother Vikram in 1996.

So shouldn't Nehru be confident?

Garrulous as ever, the man who's nicknamed "haathi" in political circles can't check the sound bites: "Compare Atal and Sonia? Shakespeare and mango pickle"; "Rae Bareli is very politicised. There are over 50 netas a street". Yet behind the bluff and bluster is a shrewd mind, which genuinely believes it has this election sewn up. Nehru is the value addition to an extensive BJP-RSS cadre network that has won on two successive occasions.

Nehru is the least of Sharma's problems. The Congress candidate has bypassed cousins Ashok and Akhilesh Singh. Ashok was the BJP MP in 1996 and 1998; Akhilesh is a Congress MLA with a reputation for being trigger happy. When Ashok -- seldom seen without a silly grin -- rejoined the Congress, he expected to be given the party ticket. In the end both Akhilesh and Ashok were told to work for Sharma. Says Akhilesh: "Our demand was for Priyankaji. When I met her I realised I'd found my leader. I will work for Sharma as a tribute to her."

Akhilesh watchers insist he has no such intention. They say he is more interested in ensuring the BJP doesn't disturb him in the Rae Bareli assembly seat when state elections take place in 2001. Their calculation is that Akhilesh will sit neutral, while the Thakurs loyal to him will vote for the BJP or Gajadhar Singh, the sp candidate who is running a tireless campaign and can expect a strong finish.

Sharma himself is taking everybody at face value ("Akhilesh has assured cooperation. I don't think there'll be any problem"). He is talking of a "local campaign", even if the maroon jeep behind his bears a West Bengal number plate, focusing on "development rather than caste and community", welcoming MLAs and former MLAs from the sp and the BSP into his fold, convinced the Congress is headed for a great triumph -- and waiting desperately for Priyanka to arrive for that promised one-day visit.

Priyanka may be the magic wand for the Congress in Amethi as well. In the fortnight leading to the voting on October 3, she plans to spend 10 days in fervid canvassing. Brother Rahul will be there too, says Sharma, the man who's "in charge of both constituencies".

On the face of it the Congress seems denuded of poll machinery in Amethi. Even the central office in the town is a waterlogged mess, with Sanjay Pathak, the local Youth Congress chief, promising "the water will be drained out by the time Priyankaji arrives on September 17". Sharma urges you not to be taken in by the surface: "The Congress network in Amethi is the best it has in Uttar Pradesh. It exists right down to the village level." As the devout would say, God may be invisible but God is great.

Awaiting the Gandhi family in Amethi are couple Sanjay and Ameeta Singh. "It's not Sanjay Priyanka will be fighting," the wife says, "it'll be me." The metamorphosis of Ameeta from a middle-class Maharashtrian girl who assisted her husband's successful campaign in 1998 to a vote-seeker in her own right is difficult to describe. The lady is focused -- "Sports teaches you that discipline" -- to a frightening degree. From Bambaiya patois, she now speaks Doordarshan-type Hindi. She is the daughter-in-law of the former royal house of Amethi and believes she must play the part.

Since May, Mr and Mrs Singh -- Maharaja and Maharani, if you prefer -- have both addressed 15-20 meetings a day. Sanjay has "already visited every one of the constituency's 1,300 booths" and plans to revisit the troublesome ones. Ameeta says she's attended every wedding, birth and death ceremony in the area in the past six months, staying put in Amethi ever since the Vajpayee government was voted out. So while Sanjay speaks of the contrast between "vidvaan (learned) Atalji" and "dasvi pass (class X pass) Sonia", Ameeta plays agony aunt in village after village.

The Singhs insist their "one vote-two MPs" slogan is backed by solid work. Every MP is entitled to Rs 2 crore every year for constituency development. In his 13 months, Sanjay spent Rs 4.09 crore. The extra Rs 2.09 crore were "funds that had lapsed because Satish Sharma couldn't use them". Sanjay used the money to "build 72 schools, marry off 65 poor girls" and so on. "Will Priyanka be able to undo all the hard work in the coming days?" he asks.

Well, she didn't have to move a finger to scupper the BJP in Sultanpur. Here, Satyadev Singh filed incomplete nomination papers and left his party without a candidate. To Deepa, who was seen pleading with V. George to allow her access to Sonia when the Congress chief visited Amethi to file her papers on September 10, the turn of events seems heady. "I was in such a hurry," she gushes, "I could not inform even my husband." Though the Congress got only 2.85 per cent of the vote in 1998, the lady is confident of winning the BJP's upper caste voters and the SP's Muslim ones.

In sum, as a Congress leader in Rae Bareli emphasised, "If the BJP could rise from two seats in 1984 to 86 in 1989, why can't we improve similarly?" In the family fiefdom then, hope springs eternal.

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