Congress president Rahul Gandhi offered prayers at the Somnath temple in Gujarat today
for weeks in the run-up to the assembly elections, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday started his day offering prayers at the state's famous Somnath temple. He will head out to meet party leaders on a visit seen as an attempt to capitalise on the momentum among party workers that the Congress' leader had built for 2019 general elections.
Congress leaders said
Mr Gandhi's visit to the state was high on symbolism as well. "It is important that this is the first state that he has chosen to travel to after becoming the party president," Gujarat Congress spokesman Manish Doshi told NDTV, recalling that the 47-year-old leader had often spoken about the affection that people had showered on him and party during the campaign.
In the state Congress, it is also seen as a sign that Mr Gandhi, as president, was up to his new job as a full time politician, willing and ready to give the BJP a fight on its home turf. Or that the sharp attacks that he launched on the BJP during the Gujarat campaign wouldn't stop just because the elections were over.
After his interaction with leaders from the four regions of Gujarat, where he will review the party's performance in each sector, Mr Gandhi - who had
tweeted an attack on the BJP before taking off from Delhi - will cap his day with a meeting of party workers where he is expected to target the BJP again.
It was during this campaign that Mr Gandhi, 47, had made it a point to drop by at different temples across the state including the Dwarkadheesh and Somnath temples in Saurashtra to offer prayers.
Mr Gandhi's choice of Somnath temple to offer prayers before heading back to Ahmedabad 400 km away for his meetings is seen as a rejoinder to the ruling BJP that had
targeted his "temple run" as a sign of desperation and an attempt to play a "soft Hindutva" card.
After his visit to Somnath temple on Gujarat's south-west coastline that he was skewered on social media as well over reports that his aides had registered him as a "non-Hindu", a controversy that his party alleged had been inked by the ruling BJP.