Sitting on the stage of his Jan Vishwas rally in Amethi, AAP leader Kumar Vishwas passionately addressed his audience of almost 12 thousand people.
"With every egg and shoe that will be thrown at me, 1000 votes from Amethi will turn to AAP," Vishwas said at one point in his speech.
A loud cheer rose from the crowd when he said it. But beyond the rally and SUVs full of supporters from across districts in the Awadh region, Amethi did not seem very keen to turn to Viswas or the Aam Aadmi Party by the thousands. Most of them seemed to set to entrust their vote with their 'prince' again.
A Congress citadel in UP, Amethi, the constituency has barely given anyone else a chance since 1967. It has been represented by non-Congress MPs only for nine years. The only time the constituency showed the door to a Gandhi was in 1977, when Sanjay Gandhi lost as the Janata Party wave swept the country and subsequently formed the government at the Centre.
But in 2014, after 10 years of a Congress-led UPA government and despite widespread anti-incumbency across the nation, Amethi is barely bothering to look for an alternative to its 'prince'. Rahul Gandhi still enjoys unanimous support from the voters in his constituency.
Can anyone really challenge Rahul Gandhi in Amethi? Representational image. PTI image
"Amethi has been with the Gandhis and rallies like these (Vishwas's) are barely going to dent the popularity that Rahul Gandhi enjoys here, just like his father did," Amit Sahani, a businessman from Gauriganj who came to attend the AAP leader's speech despite a bitterly cold winter morning, said.
During the rally, Vishwas told people to 'break free from the shackles and slavery of the Gandhi dynasty'. In Amethi, a majority of the voters have been voting for the Congress party for the last three to four generations.
"My father and grandfather both were workers for the Congress party, and never in an election has a single vote from our family gone to any other party," said Mudassar Ali, a resident of Bhoi.
However, Ali said that the present generation, that includes his son, are more practical than his.
"The young now understand that voting should be done on the basis of the work done by our politicians," he said.
Residents of Amethi prefer to stick with the Gandhis also because they believe they will not be able to enjoy the same clout with any other leader that they enjoy with the 'first family' of the Congress.
"What else does Amethi have? The land here is intensely alkaline and is no good for agriculture. No major industry is there here, the only way for Amethi to stay relevant is to stick with the Gandhis," said a journalist from a national daily, who came from Lucknow to attend the AAP rally.
"People here gets preference when it come to government jobs. Lots of young people in the Army and security forces are from Amethi. So the people of Amethi will not let it go," he said.
The number of Muslim votes in Amethi is another reason that will keep Rahul Gandhi's hopes up of avoiding an upset in the run up to the upcoming election. Muslims constitute almost 20 percent of Amethi's total voter base. A majority of them are Sunnis, who have been voting for the Congress for last four decades.
"SP holds a huge chunk of the Muslim votes in the state, but in Amethi, and more or less in the Awadh region, the traditional Muslim voters have remained with the Congress," said Tauquir Raza, the chief cleric of UP Millat Commission, who has just stopped backing the Samajwadi Party after a row over the riots in Muzaffarnagar.
But the the ghost of 1977 still troubles the Congress in Amethi. Vishwas and AAP's Sanjay Singh pointed it out to their audience at the rally. But the people of Amethi say that the 1977 defeat had barely anything to do with the anti- Congress wave.
"It was all because of Sanjay Gandhi. Voters were utterly angry with him for his sterilisation policies and the forceful implementation of it," Mohammad Anwar, a resident of Jamo, said.
"That year not a single Muslim vote went to Congress. They forcefully sterilised hundreds of young people and no one took that in right spirit," Anwar, a lawyer, said.
There are also many in Amethi, who believe that Rahul Gandhi is merely riding the wave of support for his father Rajiv.
"Rajiv was a leader who sat in Delhi but always had Amethi in his attention, but compared to that Rahul has barely spoken about the constituency," a district leader of the Congress in Amethi said, on condition of anonymity.
"The young people don't feel the same way as their fathers," he said.
However, for the youth of Amethi, the image of Rahul Gandhi is still that of a youth leader when compared to the politicians from the Samajwadi Party or Bahujan Samaj Party.
"It's like an aura. He lives in Delhi and the embodiment of everything that is right. But the SP or BSP politicians are not polished. They don't inspire people and are crass in their talking and manners," Jitendra Jain, a 29-year-old, said.
"With Akhilesh we thought that would change and the expectation reflected in the election results, but barely anything changed," he said.
A major factor in Rahul Gandhi's favour is also that in a state which has made Congress almost redundant in the last couple of decades, the Congress Vice President has always been in the opposition.
"Nothing woos people more than an opposing voice to the incumbent regime, especially if it is as worthless as the SP government. And Rahul Gandhi has spoken and taken a stance after the (Muzaffarnagar) riots, whereas the leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party are barely taking on the Samajwadi Party government. This will definitely make Rahul look like a articulate man," Hari Vansh, an expert on UP politics and editor of a national daily, said.
