The Samajwadi Party swept the Gandhi bastions of Amethi and Rae Bareli in central Uttar Pradesh, winning eight of the 10 Assembly seats in the parliamentary constituencies represented by Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi respectively.
Apart from this, the SP won nine of the 10 segments in the neighbouring Congress strongholds of Pratapgarh and Sultanpur, held by Ratna Singh and Sanjay Singh respectively.
In Pratapgarh, the party retained Rampur Khas, held for years by its legislative party leader Pramod Kumar Tiwari.
Worse, the party did not just lose 17 of the 20 segments in these four parliamentary seats which it holds, it did not even come second in 13 of these Assembly segments.
In the 2007 Assembly elections, the Congress fared significantly better, securing eight of the seats in these parliamentary constituencies, which have changed significantly following the delimitation of 2008.
Is the Gandhi family's influence on the wane?
The humiliation was most perceptible in Ms. Gandhi's Rae Bareli, where the Congress lost all five segments, finishing third in all the segments barring Harchandpur, where its candidate came second.
The party's candidates even lost to candidates of lesser known formations such as the Rashtriya Swabhimaan Party and the Peace Party in the Bachhrawan and Rae Bareli Assembly segments respectively.
In Amethi, the results were marginally better – the Congress won two segments, Tiloi and Jagdishpur. In the others, The SP decisively defeated Sultanpur MP's wife and former badminton champion Ameeta Singh in Amethi and breezed through Salon. In Gauriganj, it squeaked through by a margin of just 500 votes.
Evidently, neither the Gandhi name nor the fact that Mr. Gandhi's sister, Priyanka Vadra, who camped in the area and campaigned vigorously, helped.
While the first family of the Congress campaigned hard, the influence of its other leaders on the electorate too did not appear to have helped its cause.
Published - March 07, 2012 04:36 am IST
