There is a spring in the step of the Congress worker in Amethi , perhaps for the first time since 2014 when the UPA suffered a massive defeat in the general elections.Posters saying “Amethi Ke MP, 2019 Ke PM (Amethi’s MP is PM in 2019)” and “2018 Ke Vijeta Ka 2019 Mein Swagat (Welcome to 2019 for the winner of 2018)” were put up to greet Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi on Friday. Gandhi’s stock nationwide is up after the party’s win in the three Hindi heartland states in late last year, the Congress says, adding that Amethi now should be a cakewalk. The Congress chief in Amethi, Yogendra Mishra, admitted to ET that party workers were demoralised in 2014 — and in 2017 when it didn’t win any of the five assembly seats in Amethi — but the despondency has given way to enthusiasm and high morale now. “Rahul-ji will win with his biggest margin from Amethi this time,” Mishra said.The BJP candidate who gave Gandhi a tough fight in 2014, Smriti Irani , is, however, confident of the opposite result. “We had none of the five MLA seats in Amethi in 2014. Now, we hold four out of the five seats here and local body seats. The constituency is no longer a Gandhi stronghold. Here is a Congress president who is not acceptable in terms of leadership in his own constituency. So, he might tom-tom about any other victory but he has lost every election here since 2014,” the union textiles minister told ET in Amethi. All 850-odd gram panchyats in Amethi have seen her in person, she said, adding: “But they haven’t seen him in all these years.”The Congress says a Lok Sabha election in Amethi is always about sentiments associated with the Gandhi family, and quite different from the assembly elections. In 2014, the Congress held only two out of the five assembly seats in Amethi, but Gandhi won the Lok Sabha poll with a comfortable majority — his victory margin, though, was much smaller than in previous elections.According to the Congress, the BJP is merely engaged in propaganda in Amethi as the current government has not come up with any new big project there. “You look at the BJP propaganda here. The Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum was 95% ready by 2014. But the BJP came to power at the Centre and put up foundation stones as if we did nothing,” Mishra said.Irani, however, is well-prepared with her homework.As many as 121 gram panchayats in Amethi have been lit with electricity since the BJP came to power in 2014, she told ET. Also, 270 kms of optical fibre has been laid in Amethi since 2014, compared with none before, she said. “Is there a functional movie house in Amethi? No. There is a big flyover that does not go anywhere. The first CMO office came here due to Yogi Adityanath as CM. Before 2014, Amethi was literally a black hole,” she addded.The BJP says Irani has made nearly 30 trips to Amethi since 2014, far more than Gandhi has, despite losing the seat. Before her trip on Friday, she got a train stoppage approved for Jayas in Amethi from railways minister Piyush Goyal for a train. “I’m sure Rahul does not even know if there was such a train and if there was such a demand,” she said. She stopped for almost 30 minutes at a function in Jayas on Friday en route to Amethi to stress upon the move and residents quickly handed her over another demand regarding the train. Irani immediately got the letter scanned and sent over on the phone to Goyal’s staff.“I have been directly connected with the people of Amethi every month, every week and every day. I’m just a phone call away. People from Amethi visit me at home in Delhi if they need admission to hospitals in Delhi or admissions for their children in schools in Amethi,” Irani told ET.All BJP posters refer to her as the ‘Didi’ of Amethi.The Congress, however, says ‘Rahul Bhaiya’ has topped the popularity charts in Amethi now, especially among the youth. “People know they will be electing the next PM in Rahul. What will they get by voting for Irani? She will lose her deposit this time,” a senior Congress leader in UP said.In streets of Amethi, the talk is of a keen contest: with Irani marshalling BJP’s strength of elected representatives and Gandhi banking on his popular appeal.