Rahul Gandhi set to win

Congress candidate Rahul Gandhi is leading in the family bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.

Congress candidate Rahul Gandhi was leading in the family bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, even as the party was set to make significant gains in the Lok Sabha polls in the country's most populous state.

If he wins, Gandhi will follow in the footsteps of his parents and uncle in the semi-rural hamlet that has voted Congress 10 times to the Lower House of Parliament.

The inimitable charisma of Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, both of whom campaigned intensely in Uttar Pradesh, is being touted as one of the reasons for the party's gains in Uttar Pradesh.

In fact, during these elections, one of every three rallies addressed by Vajpayee has been in Uttar Pradesh, which elects a whopping 80 members to the Lok Sabha.

Throughout his campaign, the young Rahul Gandhi's pitch has been to carry forward the work of his father, slain former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who last won from Amethi posthumously in 1991. His result was declared after he had been assassinated in Tamil Nadu in May 1991.

Rahul Gandhi, a 33-year-old former economist from Trinity College, Cambridge, looks uncannily like his father and seems to exude the same charm on his electorate.