While Rahul Gandhi was widely feted on Tuesday for the Congress win in the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat bypoll, what came as a rude jolt to the party leadership was that the AICC general secretary had failed to deliver in the high-stakes Bundelkhand region, despite a high-voltage campaign for development.

The party must be also troubled that its much-valued young guns from Uttar Pradesh — Jitin Prasada, R P N Singh and Pradeep Jain — failed to fire in the Assembly bypolls.

The Congress came third in Bundelkhand’s Lalitpur and Jhansi constituencies which were among those that saw bypolls. Jhansi seat had been vacated by Jain after he was elected to the Lok Sabha. The first-term MP was sought to be projected as the party’s face in the region as he was appointed Union Minister of State for Rural Development.

Jhansi bypoll results, however, came as a huge damper for the Congress which, under Rahul’s stewardship, hoped to make political capital out of the backwardness of Bundelkhand region. On a visit to Bundelkhand in early 2008, the young scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family had brought the parched region into national political discourse by highlighting the lack of development there and stating that only 5 paise out of a rupee reached the people.

Rahul has made several trips to the region since then, including his four-day whirlwind tour in April 2008 when his nightstay at a Dalit’s house invited angry remarks from BSP chief Mayawati. Jain’s unexpected victory from Jhansi in the last Lok Sabha elections seemed to validate Rahul’s focus on the region. It caused enough anxiety in the BSP camp for Mayawati to nominate two Backward leaders from Bundelkhand, Gangacharan Rajput and Sriram Pal, to the Rajya Sabha last June.

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