In 105 days, he addressed 409 meetings, held six road shows and covered almost every Assembly segments in Uttar Pradesh.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has, undoubtedly, emerged as the biggest star campaigner of the 2012 Assembly elections in terms of the area he covered.
Mr Gandhi officially kicked off his election campaign from Phulpur, his grandfather late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s constituency, on November 14 and has been continuously campaigning since then, taking four-five short breaks in between and concluded his campaign on Wednesday.
“Rahulji has campaigned non-stop since the past three-and-a-half months and has remarkably mobilised the party cadres and voters. Thanks to his effort that the Congress is back in the reckoning in UP,” says UPCC president Rita Bahuguna Joshi.
Interestingly, Mr Gandhi did not differentiate between winnable and weak seats even though party manager initially wanted him to avoid the weak seats and concentrate on the stronger ones. “In fact, on some of the weak seats, he went more than once and today those very seats have come under our winnable category,” admitted a party functionary.
Mr Gandhi held six major road shows in Lucknow, Kanpur, Aligarh, Hathras, Shahjahanpur and Rampur.
According to a party leader Mr Gandhi took care not to cancel even a single meeting and did not bother to wait for crowds to show up at certain places.