Rahul Gandhi makes a gaffe in Bellary

Bellary: In a gaffe, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Friday spoke of his grandmother Indira Gandhi having fought an election from Bellary in the state.

"There is an old relationship between Bellary and my family. Indira Gandhi was fighting election from here and Sonia Gandhi also fought from here. We have a very old relationship with Bellary and you have supported us," he said. Sonia Gandhi had contested from Bellary in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls and trounced BJP`s senior leader Sushma Swaraj in a prestigeous battle that paved the way for her parliamentary debut. Indira Gandhi had not fought any election from Bellary. She contested a bye-election from Chickmagalur during the erstwhile Janata Party rule in 1978 and won it, an electoral victory that helped her political resurrection. D B Chandregowda, then a Congress MP, had vacated the seat for Indira Gandhi, who defeated Veerendra Patil of Janata Party. Rahul is the fifth member of the Gandhi family to campaign for Congress from Bellary, after Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. His sister Priyanka Gandhi had come to Bellary in 1999 when Sonia Gandhi was in the electoral field. Bellary had always been a Congress bastion until 2004, when the seat was wrested by BJP. In the 2009 polls, the Congress candidate lost by a narrow margin of 2,243 votes to BJP.