It was apparently the fear of getting hounded by the media that stopped Kalavati Bandurkar, the most visible face of the Vidarbha agrarian crisis for a while, from going up to Rahul Gandhi and apologising for her attempted poll bid. She watched from a distance as Rahul Gandhi met Shashikala after his poll rally at Yavatmal but refrained from approaching him.

“I took her along to Yavatmal on Friday since she wanted to meet Rahul and apologise for the bid to stand in elections. I had unsuccessfully tried to get permission from some senior officials, including the Collector, but didn’t mention her name for the fear that it would then become known to everyone and the media would again mob her. She has developed a fear for mediapersons and says they hound her so much that she falls ill,” Purushottam Tekam, the man who took her to the rally, told The Indian Express.

Tekam, a farmer from Jalka, is also president of Rahul Gandhi Gram Vikas Manch, a recently floated organisation in the village. “She says she wants to say sorry to him and had a great desire to meet him at the rally. I thought we would somehow manage to rush close to him when he was meeting the public, but at the last minute decided not to do so since the media was there,” Tekam said.

Tiwari, who runs the socio-political outfit Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, had announced her candidature. Kalavati, who finally withdrew from the race, had said she wanted to help farm widows and that Rahul should either support her candidature or should solve the problems of thousands of farm widows.