BHOPAL: AICC president Rahul Gandhi will address the first election campaign public meeting in Vidisha on the evening of September 17. Vidisha is a BJP stronghold, presently represented by Union minister for external affairs Sushma Swaraj , which has elected the BJP ten times without a break from 1989. The last time Congress won the Lok Sabha elections here was in 1984 after the assassination for former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Sources in the party said that Rahul Gandhi will reach Bhopal on the morning of September 17 after which he will take an organisational meeting here of state and district office-bearers and heads of frontal organisations. In the evening, he will address the meeting in Vidisha town, 60 km from the state capital. Congress leaders said, Rahul Gandhi is likely to present state Congress chief Kamal Nath to the people in this meeting.

It was earlier planned that the Congress president would kick-start assembly election campaign from the holy town of Omkareshwar in Khandwa district or the Pitambara Peeth in Datia. However, state Congress office-bearers said that the visit to Omkareshwar and Pitambar Peeth will also follow but the maiden public meeting will be in the constituency once represented by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and now by Sushma Swaraj.

“The message is clear,” explained a senior state Congress leader. “Rahul Gandhi wants to start the attack from the BJP’s safest bastion.”

For the BJP, Vidisha is not just a safe bastion. It was the constituency of former Prime Minister and BJP patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1991. But Vajpayee has contested from two seats – Lucknow and Vidisha – and won both. He retained Lucknow and vacated Vidisha, which in the bypoll that followed elected chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Since then, Chouhan retained that seat through five Lok Sabha elections till he became the chief minister in 2006. Union minister and senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj has been elected twice from here in 2009 and 2014. In between 2006 and 09, the constituency was represented by Rampal Singh (presently Chouhan’s minister for PWD who was recently caught in a controversy over the alleged suicide of his daughter-in-law Priety Raghuvanshi).

Senior Congress leaders told TOI that Rahul Gandhi prefers to start the assault from Vidisha as it is the ground for comparison with Kamal Nath’s constituency of Chhindwara. “The comparison of development will be made. Vidisha represented by Chouhan five times and Swaraj twice, versus Chhindwara represented by Kamal Nath for ten terms,” a senior state Congress leader said. “Series of announcements have been made including developing Vidisha into a smart city. Has Vidisha been developed? And in contrast is Chhindwara which is like a small metro in the southern part of the state.”

