Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra landed in Amethi today on their first visit to the constituency after their party.
Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra landed in Amethi today on their first visit to the constituency after their party, the Congress, suffered a rout in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections. (
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Besides undertaking a detailed analysis of the electoral verdict in Amethi, the 43-year-old Congress vice-president and his sister, who is a year younger than him, visited a village in which 67 houses were razed to the ground in a fire on Monday. (
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They spent an hour in the village surveying the damage inflicted by the fire and supervising the distribution of relief material. Ms Vadra said that they had applied for funds to rebuild homes under the Indira Awaas Yojana.
Her brother managed to retain Amethi after a bruising campaign marked by an exchange of vitriolic remarks between his sister, who was spearheading their party's campaign in the constituency, and Narendra Modi. (
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The BJP's prime ministerial candidate sprang a surprise by addressing a well-attended rally in Gauriganj, which forms a part of Amethi parliamentary constituency, on the last day of campaigning to muster support for his party's candidate, Smriti Irani.
Mr Gandhi, in the end, succeeded in staving off the challenge from Ms Irani, popular TV actor-turned-politician, but saw his victory margin getting reduced to 1.07 lakh votes only. In 2009, the Congress vice-president had won by a whopping 3.70 lakh votes. (
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Amethi was one of the two constituencies retained by Congress. Party president Sonia Gandhi romped home comfortably from Raebareli to score a hat-trick of victories from the constituency, but could not prevent the Congress from receiving a drubbing in UP. In 2009, the party had bagged 22 seats from the state, spawning hopes of an organisational resurrection in a state where it has remained without power for the last two-decades-and-a-half.