Priyanka and Rahul do the road show but keep their script tucked away

Blushing deeply, Rahul politely clarified.

It was polite clarification that carried the day for brother and sister as they kept repeating the same lines on this first of a three-day visit: this is a routine visit, don’t read anything into it.

Yes, on one issue, Priyanka was more vocal: the BJP’s feel-good factor, she claimed, was nowhere to be seen.

Interestingly, they covered more ground in Rae Bareli than in Amethi, from where their mother Sonia Gandhi is the sitting MP.

At present, the Congress has an all-time low of just one Assembly seat of Jagdishpur in Amethi.‘‘We are here on a routine visit and I wanted to show Rahul the development work we have done for women,’’ Priyanka said. On whether this would be seen as Rahul’s first lesson into politics, Priyanka said, ‘‘I have to tell you something…because I know Rahul, he needs no lessons.’’

Asked whether they think there is time to decide on ‘‘joining politics,’’ Priyanka said: ‘‘There is still a lot of time. We can’t do something that doesn’t agree with something inside us, that does not motivate us.’’

Agreeing with her, Rahul said, ‘‘I think my sister said it. Pressure can’t work.’’

On whether he was averse to joining politics, Rahul said, ‘‘I am not averse to it, but I am not joining right now either…This is a matter we both have discussed and decided. Everything else is just talk.’’

In Amethi, after almost five years, Rahul said some things hadn’t changed—bad roads, powerless villages, dilapidated houses—adding that some things had.

‘‘I remember the state of affairs in 1982, when it was very, very bad,’’ he said. ‘‘There is now a significant improvement…Coming here is like coming home. There is quite a bond with the people here.’’

Earlier in the day, Priyanka headed straight from the Lucknow airport towards Rae Bareli and stopped in the Muslim-dominated Nayaganj area of Salone village.

Visiting the families of Congress workers who had died, she asked her staff if the women in their families could be taught stitching at the Mahila Shiksha Kendra.

Returning from a visit to the Rajiv Gandhi Computer Shiksha Kendra, when asked why were they both eluding the press, Rahul quipped, ‘‘You are the ones giving us the chase.’’

At Lahoripur village in Rae Bareli constituency, Priyanka’s constant smile faded for just a moment. An elderly man walking her back to her vehicle said, ‘‘If you want to join politics, you must do it now. No point in doing it when Congress is finished.’’

She didn’t reply, she turned and walked back into her waiting Qualis.