Rahul Gandhi's comeback rally turns into a day of outing for thousands of farmers

NEW DELHI: All roads to Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan were streaming with packed buses carrying farmers and farm workers, who seemed to be on a day’s outing on Sunday as they took selfies with the buses and happily posed next to placards and even police barricades at the venue that was all decked up for Rahul Gandhi’s comeback rally.

Thousands of farmers from neighbouring states and party workers carrying the tricolour walked to the venue, making a success of the ‘kisan and khet mazdoor’ as Congress packed a power punch with the show of numbers. The brief to the workers was clear — get the numbers, manage the crowds and keep them there till the end.

As the venue started filling up, pop singer Jasbir Jassi performed live on a hot morning, singing his popular ‘Dil le gayi kudi Gujarat di’ to patriotic ‘Yeh desh hai veer jawanon ka’ numbers to keep the crowd entertained. The farmers danced merrily to songs such as ‘Chhora Ganga kinaare waala’.

The party’s state units followed a colour code of sorts to show the high command who had scored more numbers. While Bhupinder Hooda’s loyalists from Haryana wore pink turbans, farmers from Uttarakhand wore green Gandhi caps and Rajasthan farmers sported red bandhani turbans to stand out in the crowd. But Hooda’s ‘gulaabi sena (pink army)’ easily outnumbered the competition. The farmers in pink turbans also seemed to be the most vocal of them all.