appearance at the Qutubullapur municipal ground on Friday afternoon did not stir up the kind of reaction that local Congress leaders were expecting. The organisers could not manage to pull more than a thousand people for the event and the ground remained empty until five minutes before the young MP pulled up at the venue in a bullet proof black Scorpio.
Addressing the crowd in Hindi (that was translated into Telugu) Rahul Gandhi, who looked fresh despite his day-long public meetings, began with saying that “visiting Andhra Pradesh was like coming back home for him’’, trying hard to hold the attention of the small gathering.
However, the young Congress leader could not evoke much cheer among the people who maintained an unbelievable silence through most part of his speech.
Unlike usual public meetings, there were no spontaneous applauses, cheers and slogan chanting from the crowd, apart from a “Rahul Gandhi zindabad’’ here and there and a faint applause once in a while.
The MP’s list of UPA’s achievements in the last five years, from running a government for the ‘aam aadmi’ to providing mid-day meals for the poor, did not manage to strike a chord with the ‘janata’, that was possibly waiting for fresh promises for this election season.
It was chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who was left with the task of garnering some reaction from the otherwise bored crowd. He announced that the 20 kg rice scheme (per ration card) would be increased to 30 kg, if he was voted back to power that was greeted with a thunderous applause.
Despite nursing a sore throat after several public meetings and roadshows, YSR ‘garu’ managed to keep the crowd hooked throughout his 10-minute speech. Even as he appealed to the gathering to vote for Sarve Satyanarayana (Malkajgiri Lok Sabha candidate) and K M Prathap (Qutubullapur assembly candidate) the crowd applauded in unison, assuring him of their support.
The only time when Rahul Gandhi managed to make a mark on the gathering was when he pointed fingers at NDA’s “Swiss bank driven campaign’’. “It is only before the elections that NDA is reminded of the Swiss bank and uses it to accuse the Congress of accumulating wealth there. After the elections it is all forgotten. But I promise, when our government comes to power this time, we shall investigate the matter thoroughly,’’ said the youth Congress leader. His appeal to the gathering to vote the party back to power both at the Centre and in the state also won him some applause.
