The Smriti Surge

UNDER THE SHADE of a banyan tree on a hot May morning, Union Minis­ter Smriti Irani sits on the floor among almost a thousand women, offering prayers to ‘Dukh Duriya Devi’ (goddess who eliminates sorrow), an old ritual practised at this time of year when the scorching sun starts taking a toll.

Each woman, who has neither eaten nor had water since the morning, sits with a packet of puffed rice and jaggery before her, a bit of which they put in Irani’s sari as she moves among them. She is no stranger; nor an outsider any longer for the women who have gathered at Mangrauli from around a dozen neighbouring villages in Amethi, where the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Irani, who defeated Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in 2019, is contest­ing from again.

“Didi [Irani] gaon mein aati rehti hain… Is chauhara par light lag­wayi hain (Irani keeps coming to the villages. She has got lights installed at the crossing here),” says Pradeep Kumar, a villager standing away from the crowd, watching the ceremony.

Irani appears familiar with the protocol. The women sit silent­ly, heads covered with their saris, most of them reluctant to speak about politics. Some praise the Modi government’s schemes like LPG cylinders and free rations. “Please get us a tailoring centre so that girls get employment,” one of them, Rita Goswami, tells Irani as she gives puffed rice to her. Another elderly woman asks for a baratghar (wedding hall). Irani smiles, saying, “Accha amma (Ok, mother),” as she leaves for her next engagement.

This time, with the retreat of the Nehru-Gandhi family from its pocket borough of nearly four decades, Irani is facing Gandhi loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma of Congress, for the May 20 Lok Sabha election. Neither candidate belongs to Uttar Pradesh (UP). While Irani was born in New Delhi to a half-Punjabi, half- Maharashtrian father and a Bengali mother, Sharma is a native of Ludhiana in Punjab and has been a representative of the Gandhis in Amethi and Rae Bareli. With the absence of a member of the Gandhi family in the race, BJP is seeing it as a cakewalk for Irani whose mission was to capture the bastion.

Gandhi or no Gandhi, Irani says she was always confident of winning Amethi. “In 2019, it was because of the work I had done, and today I have a progress report of five years to show vis-à-vis the erstwhile Congress president who was here for 15 years and could barely do half the amount of work that I have done,” she says, her throat sore from the heat and dust of campaigning. But she says the greatest takeaway of her time in Amethi is that in every gram panchayat she has managed to not only do developmental work but also connect with people. As her convoy moves into a narrow lane inside a village, where she is to make a condolence call at the house of a party booth president, she reels out figures. Over the past 10 days, with the pace of campaigning picking up, she has had 223 meetings in various villages of the constituency. From May 2023 till February this year, that figure has been 906.

She also has the statistics of development work done over the past five years, in what has been a high-profile constituen­cy, on the tips of her fingers—1.14 lakh houses, water connec­tions to 3.5 lakh homes, 4 lakh toilets, electricity connections in 1.5 lakh homes, setting up the chief medical officer’s office, build­ing the collectorate, the police line, the first-ever medical college, a 200-bed hospital, first-ever trauma centre, first-ever bypass, the first-ever Krishi Vigyan Kendra, first-ever fertiliser rake point. “There are many firsts which is a shocker for a place that boasted of being a Gandhi family bastion. So if you assume there are four members per family, then four lakh toilets would mean 16 lakh people in this constituency were defecating in the open. So much for the so-called progress that the Gandhi family brought to this place. Why were 1.5 lakh families without electricity here?”

Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, has taken his electoral battle to neighbouring Rae Bareli, in an attempt to hold on to the last Congress bastion in UP, after his mother Sonia Gandhi decided to enter Rajya Sabha. The move has not only amplified taunts from BJP, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading the tirade, saying that the fear of losing made him “run away” from Amethi, but has also left Congress supporters in Amethi heartbroken over Gandhi “abandoning” them.

Traditional backers of Congress in Amethi say the fight has now become one-sided, making the campaign dry as dust. “Sharma cannot give a fight to Irani. Someone from the Gandhi family should have been fielded,” says Ravi Jaiswal, a fruit-seller in Fursatganj in Amethi’s Tiloi.

Nearby, Rajesh Jaiswal, another Congress backer, who runs a grocery store, says nothing has been done in Tiloi as far as educa­tion and employment are concerned. “But how far can Sharma give Irani a fight? People are upset Rahul Gandhi has left Amethi.” According to him, the crowd at her rallies in Amethi’s Tiloi is be­cause of the popularity of Raja Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh, who has represented the Assembly seat as BJP MLA since 2002.

Addressing a rally in Hanumangarhi in Tiloi, Irani, her voice still cracking but lucid, her words characteristically feisty, takes on “the yuvraj who runs away from Amethi and goes south” comparing him with the “Tiloi yuvraj” whom she describes as someone with “vinamra swabhav (gentle nature)”. She sharp­ens her attack on Gandhi, her old adversary in the seat, taking swipes at him: “The Congress yuvraj won’t be able to write Tiloi in Hindi… As MP, after five years, I have the heart to face you and challenge you. For 15 years you were lapata (absconding). What did you do in Amethi?”

She goes on to take a dig at Gandhi over the comments of Fawad Hussain Chaudhry, a minister in the erstwhile Imran Khan government in Pakistan who applauded his speech on X. “Bhaiyya main poochna chahti hun, yeh rishta kya kehlata hai? (Brother, I want to ask what does this relationship mean?),” says Irani, alluding to a television family drama. The actor-turned-politician, who played the role of Tulsi in the television series Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and is now woman and child development minister, has built a house in Medan Mawai village in Gauriganj, the headquarters of Amethi district, juxtaposing her association with the constituency with that of Gandhi, whom she has been calling an “absentee politician”.

Even Congress supporters agree that Gandhi has not visited Amethi in the last five years. Irani was pitted against Gandhi in Amethi in 2014, but she lost by over a lakh votes, a defeat she has attributed to former Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav coming to Gandhi’s aid by not fielding any candi­date from his party. She, however, did manage to bring down his victory margin, which was 3.7 lakh in 2009. In 2019, she won by 55,120 votes, defeating Gandhi, who won his other seat in Kerala’s Wayanad.

ASKED IF SHE faced any challenges, Irani says the fact that Congress took so long to declare its candidate itself is an indication that the party did not consider it an easy battleground. “The very fact that they were constrained to an­nounce just one day to go before the last date for nominations, that is unprecedented. That in itself shows the sheer amount of work that has been done here and the ground connect that we have. Like I said, that is work done in just five years as compared to a 50-year-old bastion.” Besides her own work, Irani sees Modi’s leadership as her biggest advantage in the election.

At another rally, she takes on Congress over its promise to con­duct a nationwide caste and economic survey. “I have brought Modiji’s message that as long he lives he will not let anyone touch the poor, or steal their reservation,” she says. She goes on to ask how many in the audience are getting free rations and how many got free Covid vaccines. Several hands are raised. These, besides the Ram Mandir, `6,000 a year for farmers and toilets, are among the other issues that form the crux of her speeches.

Sitting in the audience, Simla, a young woman who is study­ing, praises the Modi government’s welfare schemes but laments that there are not enough jobs. “We are getting free rations. But, my husband is unwell and I have to borrow money to treat him. Even in Congress’ time there was not enough employment,” she says.

As temperatures soar, Irani’s car moves through a freshly tarred road in the middle of parched fields and wilder­ness. “Whoever Congress announces, it’s their call. But the issue is that earlier the question used to be asked as to who BJP would field. Now the tables have turned and the press is asking who Congress will field. That shows the extent of change this constituency has undergone politically,” she says.

Monu Pande, a farmer in Nigoha gram sabha under which 12 villages fall, points to a tank, saying that Irani got it built. “On one side of the road there is brackish water and women would walk to fetch water from the other side. There were several accidents while crossing the road. Rahul Gandhi did not bother in the last 10 years, but Irani built the tank in the five years of her term,” he says.

At a tea shack, some elderly farmers pledge their support for Congress. “People are feeling bad that Rahul Gandhi is no longer a candidate in Amethi. But so what? Congress is fighting,” says Shitla Prasad, as he repairs a customer’s bicycle.

At a dhaba in Tiloi, a youth called Arun Saini says that his en­tire village, Chirauli, has switched its allegiance from Congress to BJP. “Gandhi or anyone from Congress has not campaigned for the past five years. Under the Modi government, we got free rations and toilets, but there are no jobs. Congress did bring some companies to Amethi, but they have been shut down,” he says.

Sharma is the first non-Gandhi to fight from Amethi since 1998, when a close associate of the family, Satish Sharma, lost to BJP’s Sanjay Singh. Satish Sharma was fielded by Congress after Indira Gandhi’s elder son Rajiv Gandhi, who won the seat for three consecutive elections from 1981 to 1991, was assassi­nated. The first Gandhi to win from Amethi was Indira Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay in 1980, but he died in a plane crash months later. His widow, Maneka Gandhi, now in BJP, fought from Am­ethi as an Independent in 1984 but lost to Rajiv Gandhi. In 1999, when Rajiv Gandhi’s widow Sonia Gandhi fought her first elec­tion from Amethi, Sharma was in-charge of the constituency and for Rae Bareli when she moved there in 2004, leaving Am­ethi to her son Rahul. He won three consecutive terms till Irani emerged as his challenger, disrupting once again the Gandhi family’s run in what had become its stronghold. In 2019, as the writing on the wall started becoming clear, Gandhi fought from Wayanad too, besides Amethi.

Although the Gandhi family has left it to Sharma to fight from Amethi this time, party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is leading the campaign for him in a last-minute effort to galvanise the party. Irani, meanwhile, has called Gandhi’s giving up fighting from Amethi as Congress’ acceptance of defeat. And, as she says, the tables have turned. On the Gandhi turf, she is no longer the challenger.

2024 Elections2024: The CountdownAmethiGeneral election 2024Kishori Lal SharmaSmriti IraniUttar Pradesh