Congress president Sonia Gandhi recently paid a visit to Rae Bareli, her constituency. There was the usual fanfare, with yet more projects and welfare units being inaugurated. There were enough crowds too, but all was not as it seemed. Disappointed voters, especially women, had planned protests at various spots during the visit. For local party leaders, this was a potentially embarrassing situation. So they came up with the ingenious idea of gheraoing the potential gheraoers. The situation at Soniaji’s meetings soon became a comic cacophony of protests and praise. Whenever the protesters gathered in the range of Sonia’s vision, they were encircled by party workers shouting ‘Sonia Gandhi ki jai’ and so on. With all the shouting, Mrs G left Rae Bareli happy, she’d never been so raucously ‘welcomed’ here before. |