No Rahul repeat: Cong to pack in crowds for Sonia's Delhi rally today

As campaigning reaches fever pitch in Delhi ahead of assembly elections, Congress President Sonia Gandhi will address an election rally in Delhi’s Shastri Park this evening. According to reports, Gandhi will focus on highlighting all the development that has taken place under Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. [caption id=“attachment_1245995” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sonia Gandhi’s rally will pack in the crowds: PTI[/caption] And according to this report in the Times of India, the Congress is keen to avoid another attendance debacle like it faced for Rahul Gandhi’s last rally in the capital. It is working overtime to ensure that the crowds pour into Shastri Park, which has a capacity of about 25,000 people. The report says, “Minister and Gandhi Nagar MLA Arvinder Singh Lovely is coordinating the mobilization along with other MLAs. It is learnt that targets are being assigned to workers and responsibilities are being fixed. Elaborate transport arrangements are being made to ensure that people make it to the venue.” Hindustan Times added that the “central leadership has also told the state leaders to look into reasons why the crowd was thin and warned them against “complacency.” The debacle in Dakshinpuri, where sections of an already thin crowd for Rahul Gandhi’s rally began to leave as he started speaking, has greatly embarrassed the Congress and provided even more fodder for BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Addressing a rally in Alwar, Rajasthan, Modi said “There are rallies where people are told ‘stop, don’t go; stop, don’t go’. And there are rallies where I have to apologise to people because they could not see me". He was referring to Sheila Dikshit’s appeal to sections of the crowd to wait till the Congress Vice-President’s speech got over at the 17 November rally. Dikshit later blamed “strict security set up” and police’s refusal to allow people to carry water as the reason that people left Rahul’s rally. “They may have been thirsty and a little anguished,” Dikshit told PTI. The chief minister also said that people had to wait for long, which could have been one of the reasons for leaving the venue before Rahul started speaking.