With the Gandhi siblings hitting the streets on the Hathras gang-rape incident and visuals of the duo being forcibly stopped by the Uttar Pradesh police as they proceeded to meet the family of the victim and eventually getting arrested playing out, the Congress, desperate for a revival in its fortunes, is hoping the sequence of events will help it take control of the political narrative.
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary in charge of party affairs in UP, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were stopped enroute to Hathras on the Yamuna Expressway after which they began walking, only to be stopped by the police who arrested them.
Visuals of the police forcibly taking the duo into detention, the party hopes, will help make a political statement about the seriousness of its challenge to the BJP, especially the Yogi Adityanath regime in UP.
For the Congress, today's incident is reminiscent of Indira Gandhi's Belchi moment of July 1977. The former prime minister had arrived in Belchi village of Bihar's Patna district to meet the families of 11 dalits who had been killed by an upper caste gang. The powerful image of Indira arriving in flooded Belchi atop an elephant to be with the dalit victims' families marked her comeback after her electoral decimation some months back.
Rahul and Priyanka were accompanied by, among others, members of the scheduled castes department of the Congress, a clear indication that the party is keen to play up the caste fault lines in the political landscape of the UP. The victim was a dalit and this accentuates the accusations being made against the Adityanath government by its political rivals that it favours only the Thakurs and is being inimical to the other castes, especially the Brahmins and the dalits.
With assembly elections in UP due in a little over a year, the Congress is keen to play up the Brahmin-dalit card and bring back into the fold the two communities which were traditionally its supporters.
The initiative by the Gandhi duo will also be helpful in silencing their critics, especially in the backdrop of the letter of dissent sent by 23 senior leaders to Congress president Sonia Gandhi seeking a major overhaul of the party and stressing the need for a visible and effective leadership.
With the Congress upping the ante over the farmers' agitation against the contentious farm laws passed by Parliament recently, Rahul is scheduled to take part in a tractor rally in Punjab later this week.