As soon as he contested his first Lok Sabha election, his eyes were set on reviving the Congress’s fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul’s logic, which he often shared with his team, is simple and irrefutable: The three states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh together send nearly 150 MPs to the Lok Sabha, and capturing these three political arenas would ensure that the grand old party could once again come to power, on its own, at the Centre. ‘I live in Delhi but my heart is in UP,’ he told a gathering at a public meeting he was addressing in western UP. That he was a fourth-generation parliamentarian from UP only helped firm up Rahul’s resolve. In January 2006, when he made that unscheduled speech at the Congress Hyderabad plenary, Rahul made it clear that, once he took charge of things Congress leaders would have to work hard. It was no use, he said, blaming casteist or communal parties for the Congress’s plummeting fortunes in the region: ‘We have failed to live up to people’s expectations, we have stopped fighting for their causes and we have lost the ability to link the Party organization with our workers and people.’ Between 2006 and the Lok Sabha polls in 2009, Rahul’s remarks and his extensive touring of the state often drew cynical responses from various quarters.
