Congmen pull out stops to ensure audience for Sonia

Therefore, to avoid traffic jams, Sonia will be flying the rally venues in a helicopter. And candidates will pull out all stops to ensure there are people to hear her after she lands.

Published on: Nov 27, 2003, 11:55:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Fear that a thin audience will greet Sonia Gandhi when she arrives for her three election rallies in the city on Thursday has prompted the Congress to send out word that candidates -- and their supporters -- must be at the venues well before the scheduled time. Even if it means cancelling their own campaign programmes for the day.

Congress poll strategists have learnt two valuable lessons from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's rallies last week.

One, that people who are greatly inconvenienced by VIP movement in the city may actually vote against the party, and two, the stature or charisma of a leader is by itself no guarantee of a huge turnout.

Therefore, to avoid traffic jams, Sonia will be flying the rally venues in a helicopter. And candidates will pull out all stops to ensure there are people to hear her after she lands.

The party has divided the city into three zones centred on Sonia's rally venues. New Delhi, south Delhi and south-west Delhi are in the Chiragh Delhi zone where she will address her first rally. East and central Delhi are in the Dilshad Garden zone, venue of rally number two. And North and West Delhi are in Mangolpuri.

Each candidates will attend the rally in his area. They have been told to organise vehicles to ferry people to the venues, besides the food that will be distributed among the rallyists.

Delhi's pronounced disinterest in public rallies in these elections has left no leader untouched.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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