Amethi/Rae Bareli:
Amethi and Rae Bareli, the pocket boroughs of Congress since the days of Indira Gandhi, gave a shocker to the party as it managed to win only two of the 10 Assembly seats in these twin Lok Sabha constituencies.
The most stunning was the defeat of sitting MLA Amita Singh, wife of Congress MP Sanjay Singh, in Amethi seat where she had to bite the dust by a margin of 8,760 votes. Samajwadi Party's Gayatri Prasad emerged the winner.
In Sonia Gandhi's Rae Bareli, Congress only managed a 'nil' result and was a distant third in three of the five assembly constituencies while Samajwadi Party managed to romp home in four seats. The fifth seat was won by Peace Party. Amethi, represented by Rahul Gandhi fared better for Congress in comparison to Rae Bareli as the party won two out of the five seats in the constituency.
Congress had seven assembly seats in these two Lok Sabha constituencies in the 2007 Assembly elections. The only two candidates who managed to win are Radhey Shyam Kannaujia Jagdishpur (Reserved) and Dr Muslim (Tiloi) in Amethi.
The party can take solace in Mohd Naeem who lost the Gauriganj seat by a slender margin of 186 votes.
The 10 seats on these twin constituencies had been the prestige issue for the Congress and its star campaigner Priyanka Gandhi had camped there for 17 days accompanied by her children for about nine days. Her husband, Robert Vadra also campaigned.
Sonia and Rahul also held an election rally each in these areas.
Besides these two constituencies, the party also witnessed a complete rout in adjoining Sultanpur seat represented by Sanjay Singh (Cong) in the Lok Sabha where SP won all the five seats.