Won't allow BJP to capture Nehru-Gandhi bastion: Cong

Apparently perturbed by the renewed BJP campaign against party vice-president Rahul Gandhi in his Lok Sabha constituency of Amethi, Congress has decided to change its strategy to ''effectively counter'' the saffron offensive and thwart any attempt to capture the Nehru-Gandhi bastion.
 
According to the sources in the local unit of the Congress, the party was working on ''multi-pronged'' strategies to ''counter'' the impression the BJP has been trying to create here that Rahul had neglected the constituency and that he seldom visited it.
 
''Despite his preoccupation elsewhere we have requested Rahulji to increase the frequency of his visit to Amethi,'' said a senior local Congress leader here.
 
He said that party's star campaigner Priyanka Gandhi too would be regularly visiting Amethi and Raebareli, which was represented in the Lok Sabha by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
 
Besides the local Congress leaders would also be visiting the four corners of Amethi and ''expose'' the BJP's claim of the launching of development projects in the constituency.
 
Amethi district Congress president Yogendra Mishra, however, appears unfazed by the saffron offensive. ''It is nothing but pressure politics.....BJP has become scared of Rahulji after the latter's successful campaigning in Gujarat and so it wants him to be bogged down here,'' Mishra said while speaking to Deccan Herald.
 
He said that the people of Amethi had reposed their faith in the Gandhi family despite the ''lies unleashed'' by it in the 2014 LS elections. ''The people, not only of Amethi but the entire country, are facing the effects of misrule of the BJP government....it will be routed in 2019,'' Mishra said.
 
Making light of the projects launched by union minister Smriti Irani, who had unsuccessfully contested against Rahul from here in 2014, Mishra said that all the projects had already been launched by Rahul in the past.
 
He said that Irani had, while she was union HRD minister, had ''withheld'' maintenance grant of Rs. ten lakh to the Central School at Tiloi in the constituency.
 
''Why did she (Irani) choose to become RS member from Gujarat is he was so much in love with Amethi...she should have waited for the 2019 LS polls and contest from here again,'' Mishra said.
 
BJP leaders, including national party president Amit Shah, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and several state ministers besides Irani, had descended on Amethi on Tuesday and launched a slew of projects and sought to corner Rahul on his home turf.