Sonia to start campaining with rally in Hyd today
UPA chairperson to share stage with leaders of Congled Maha Kootami
HYDERABAD : Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi will address a rally in Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad on Friday, her first in the current round of assembly elections in five states. Her rally ahead of the December 7 elections in Telangana is important because she is credited with the creation of the state, carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014. Gandhi has not addressed any election rally in the any of the poll-bound states so far.
Former Congress president and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi will address a rally at Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad Friday, her first in the current round of assembly elections in five states. Her rally ahead of the December 7 assembly elections in Telangana is important because she is credited with the creation of the state, carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014.
Gandhi has not addressed any election rallies in the poll-bound states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Mizoram in the northeast, and Chhhattisgarh, where polling was completed on November 20.
“The fact that she has agreed to address a rally in Telangana itself shows how she is sentimentally attached to the state,” Congress party in-charge of Telangana affairs R C Khuntia said.
Gandhi, 71, had last addressed an election rally in Karnataka on May 8, after she was forced to call off a road show in Varanasi mid way due to ill health and a shoulder injury on August 2, 2016 to launch the party’s poll campaign in Uttar Pradesh for the 2017 elections.
Not only Uttar Pradesh, she had also stayed away from campaigning for the party in Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur (February-March 2017) and subsequently Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh (December 2017) and also Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland (February 2018).
Sonia Gandhi will spend close to three hours in Hyderabad – she will arrive in Begumpet airport by a special flight at 5 pm, will travel to Medchal by road to address the public meeting at 6 pm and return to Delhi by an 8 pm flight. She will be accompanied by her son and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, party leaders said. For the first time, leaders of four alliance partners of the Congress-led Maha Kootami (grand alliance) in Telangana will be sharing the stage with Sonia Gandhi and address the gathering. “More than 30,000 booth committee members will attend the meeting and each of them is expected to mobilise eight to 10 people,” Khuntia said.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu will not attend the rally.
Senior Telangana TDP leader and former MP Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy said that in line with a prior understanding between the party and Congress, Naidu would not be attending Sonia Gandhi’s meeting but would depute his Telangana TDP president L Ramana.
“However, he (Chandrababu Naidu)has agreed to take part of in some of the rallies of Rahul Gandhi in the last week of November,” Reddy said. Khuntia said Rahul Gandhi would be addressing separate rallies in different parts of Telangna on November 28, 29 and December 3, in which Naidu may participate.
Almost all the top Congress leaders including Ahmed Patel, Veerappa Moily and Jairam Ramesh, besides Karnataka minister D K Shiva Kumar are in Hyderabad to oversee arrangements for Sonia Gandhi’s rally.
According to Congress leaders, through her rally, the party wants to project the fact that Telangana state would not have become a reality but for the initiative taken by Sonia Gandhi.
“Despite knowing that the party would suffer heavily in the Seemandhra region, she took a big risk and granted statehood to Telangana, notwithstanding severe opposition from within the party,” senior Telangana Congress treasurer Guduru Narayan Reddy said. “She understood the aspirations of the people and their long-drawn struggle over the years. This we are going to explain to the people.”
Political analyst and former Osmania University professor K Nageshwar said Sonia’s rally would definitely boost the morale of the party cadre in the Telangana elections although it might not exactly be a game changer. “Sonia’s rally is not the only factor in the elections, as there are various other factors that will influence the voting pattern. So, the Congress cannot say her presence would completely bring a turnaround in its fortunes,” he said.
Nageshwar said people of Telangana definitely held Sonia Gandhi in great respect as she had granted Telangana statehood, a fact even state chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had admitted on the floor of the assembly. “Secondly, the TRS would not dare launch a counterattack on Sonia, as it has done in the case of Rahul Gandhi.”
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