Rahul Gandhi to visit Amethi on Wednesday, first time after losing in Lok Sabha polls

During his day-long visit,  Gandhi is expected to meet party workers to ascertain the reasons behind the party's defeat.

The Congress leader, who is an MP from Wayanad in Kerala, will hold meeting with the party workers at Nirmala Devi educational institute in Gauriganj, confirmed district Congress spokesperson Anil Singh here on Tuesday.

The Congress had earlier also constituted a two-member panel, comprising UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s representative KL Sharma and AICC secretary Zubair Khan, to analyse the reasons behind the poll debacle in the party's stronghold of Amethi.

According to the panel's findings, the 'non-cooperation' by the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party workers at the grassroots level were to be blamed for the poll rout. The SP and the BSP, which had formed an alliance for the Lok Sabha polls, did not field any candidate in Amethi in a show of tacit support to the grand old party.

The local leaders had also reportedly claimed that the absence of a BSP candidate contributed to Mr Gandhi's defeat, even though he got more votes than his 2014 tally. The panel was told that the votes from the BSP candidate's kitty went to the BJP instead of getting transferred to the Congress.

A senior Congress leader had even said, 'The party chief had bagged 4,08,651 votes in 2014 while he got 4, 13,994 votes in 2019. The BSP candidate from Amethi in 2014 had got around 57,000 votes. Interestingly, this time the margin by which Mr Gandhi lost Amethi was around 55,000.'

Local Congress leader Yogendra Mishra had said, 'The votes of the BSP instead of going to Congress actually got transferred to BJP due to absence of any BSP candidate. Also, the son of Gayatri Prajapati, who was the mining minister in the then SP government, and SP MLA from Gauriganj Rakesh Pratap Singh, had expressed their support to the BJP. Mr Singh extended support to Mr Gandhi after getting directive from the leadership but it was too late by then.'

Mr Sharma, however, refuted this justification and said that there will be further feedback sessions with workers from the Tiloi and Gauriganj segments.