Rahul Gandhi’s Tiruchy visit to lift Congress hopes

Chennai: Expectations are high in the state Congress ranks with party national vice president Rahul Gandhi making his first visit to Tamil Nadu after the party suffered its second split in two decades in November 2014. TNCC leaders and cadres are hopeful that their poster boy who is making a whirlwind tour across the country would lift the party’s image, which hit the nadir after the May 2014 Lok Sabha election in which it secured an all time low five per cent votes followed a vertical split engineered by former Union shipping minister G. K. Vasan months later.

State Congress president E.V.K.S. Elangovan has put everything at his disposal to put up an elaborate show for Gandhi scion’s Tiruchy visit. He last toured Tamil Nadu to campaign for his party MP candidates in April 2014. Like in the other states he had toured in the past, Mr Gandhi will meet a delegation of farmers said to be representing 19 different associations after the 4 pm rally on Thursday.

Curiosity quotient has increased as Mr Gandhi visits TN or rather addresses a massive rally in the backdrop of the land Bill, Vyapam, Lalitgate and a host of others scams rocking the early days of winter session of  Parliament and the Narendra Modi regime struggling to make peace with the 44-member Congress Parliamentary party in the Lok Sabha.

Incidentally, the BJP threw a bombshell on Wednesday by airing a sting video exposing Congress Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s (Uttarakhand) alleged involvement in a scam. While the usual Congress troubleshooters are engaged in damage control at the national capital, critics and media have turned their attention to Tiruchy to see if the Congress vice-president would respond to BJP’s verbal volleys on Thursday.