Lok Sabha Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi had conducted an event in Chennai under the name “Voice of Students.”
Some of the incidents that took place at this event, organized by the Congress national leadership, made even the senior leaders of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee present in the hall squirm in embarrassment.
This is an event designed by Congress for Rahul with the aim of going to all states and interacting with students under the name “Voice of Students.”
Following the states of Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, this event was held in Tamil Nadu yesterday as well. Grand arrangements for this were made by the Congress at Chennai’s Island Grounds.
The Tamil Nadu Congress had invited students from colleges around Chennai and brought them together for the event. Nearly 5,000 students gathered at the venue.
Since it was a program to interact with students, it had been planned that only Rahul would be on the stage. Congress seniors including P. Chidambaram, Thirunavukkarasar, and K.S. Alagiri, along with MPs and MLAs, had been allotted seating 300 meters away from the stage.
Except for Selvaperunthagai, all of Congress’s senior leaders were present at the event. With performances by Govind Vasantha and Therukural Arivin, the festival was going along in a lively manner. The students too were dancing, shouting, and cheering enthusiastically.
'Rahul is going to be amazed by the energy of Tamil Nadu students,' the khadi-shirted men were delighted. But when the students, who had been cheerful all along, shouted 'TVK... TVK...' as soon as Rahul took the stage and walked out of the hall, it left the faces of Congress seniors twitching with embarrassment.
Seeing students leave in droves even as Rahul was speaking, all the seniors, including P. Chidambaram, squirmed in discomfort. They also muttered, 'They went and messed things up by doing something on their own instead of listening to what we said....'
We spoke to some Congress functionaries about why the event flopped. “This event is being run entirely by the Delhi leadership. They were the ones who designed it completely. On Manickam Tagore’s instructions, we went to colleges and brought back only students. But on the day of the event, we ourselves were not satisfied with the arrangements that had been made here.
They said Rahul would take the stage by 6 o’clock, so the students were told to be brought to the venue by 3 o’clock. But no chairs were even arranged for the students to sit on in the hall. The students were told to sit on the floor.
Not even a mat was spread on the floor. We told the national organizers that doing this in Tamil Nadu would be wrong... please make some arrangement. They said, “This is how we have planned it across India.”
They brushed us off, saying you wouldn’t understand our style. The students were sitting on the floor, struggling in the heat. There was also a problem with the event’s design. The purpose of the event was to project Rahul as a hero among the students. But during the program, they screened Rahul’s videos and, in the background, played Vijay’s songs “Vaathi Coming...” and “Master the Blaster...” loudly.
It would have been fine if this had happened in other states. Here, as soon as Vijay’s songs started playing, the students began shouting, “TVK... TVK...” Street Voice Arivu also came and sang “Vaathi Coming” live. Even then, the only chant was still “TVK... TVK.” A significant number of the students even assumed that Vijay himself was going to attend the event.
Only at 7 o’clock, after all the dancing and singing had ended, did Rahul take the stage. Even as he stepped up and took the microphone, they chanted, “TVK... TVK..” Since Vijay did not come, they could not wait any longer, and there was no comfortable place to sit, so students began dispersing while Rahul was speaking.
Since the students wanted to leave in a crowd, the police allowed them to exit for security reasons as well.
Even as Rahul was speaking, the seniors’ faces turned anxious when they saw the ground emptying out. They immediately sent the administrators to speak with the police officers and have the exits through which the students were leaving blocked. Even that was of no use.
By then, 70% of the students had already left. Rahul also wrapped up his speech quickly, because dragging it on any further would have meant the ground would be completely empty. This is a project being handled entirely by Delhi.
Journalists and influencers had been brought in from Delhi at considerable expense. They are the ones talking about the event being a success... a success... But on the ground, there was no impact at all. It was as if the Delhi leadership had arranged a free concert for Tamil Nadu students.
As soon as the concert ended, the students dispersed. If the event had been organized after fully consulting the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, this could have been avoided,'' they say.
Some other leaders we spoke to said, "This event had been held only in BJP-ruled states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Maharashtra. Rahul’s aim was to expose the BJP among students. In that case, breaking that pattern and coming to Tamil Nadu was an ill-considered decision.
There is no BJP here at all. This is where the national leadership has worked out a different calculation. In North India, a campaign is being run aggressively that Vijay is the Prime Minister. The national leadership believes that TVK is doing this deliberately. In order to counter that campaign by TVK, the leadership thought it could gather a crowd of students in Tamil Nadu and boost Rahul’s mass appeal. But that was a very wrong decision.
Vijay now stands with overwhelming support among the people. If they had waited a little, stayed calm, and mobilized students when the political climate was right, what they wanted would have happened. The Delhi leadership acted in haste,'' they said.