On his favourite mission to woo Dalits and tribals, Congress ‘Prince’ Rahul Gandhi began his two-day Jharkhand visit on Wednesday from the tribal-majority district of Sahebganj, near West Bengal border.

Rahul has been visiting his Lok Sabha home constituency in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and some other states regularly to interact with Dalits and tribals.

His arrival in Jharkhand very next day of the two-day Maoist bandh, which witnessed heavy violence in various parts of the state, has led to speculation in the political quarters that the assembly elections may be announced soon.

The assembly polls are likely to be held by the end of this year. The Congress as well as the opposition parties believe that Rahul’s visit is aimed at wooing tribals and Dalits who are in a sizeable number. Jharkhand has been under the President’s rule since January.

On his first leg of the visit, Rahul gave a new slogan ‘Neta chuniye, neta baniye’. In Dhanbad, he said: “Only those would become leaders from the grass root level who would mobilise more youths as members. No leader would be imposed from the above. The leadership would be allowed to grow from the Panchayati raj level.”

Many of the areas that he visited on Wednesday and will be visiting on Thursday have a strong Maoist influence. Eighteen of the 24 districts of the state are Naxal-infested. His visit is keeping the police and security agencies on high alert.

Rahul began his visit by attending an Adivasi Yuva Sammelan (AYS) in Sahebganj. He then proceeded to Dumka district, around 500 km from there. Both Sahebganj and Dumka are tribal-majority districts.

In the afternoon he visited Dhanbad and Hazaribagh districts and arrived in Ranchi late in the evening. With the exception of Sahebganj, all these districts have a sizeable presence of Naxal guerrillas.

Reports reaching here from Dhanbad said that the Congress general secretary remained cut off from the ‘aam aadmi’ during his visit there. He kept himself confined to the Youth Congress workers who had come from four districts of Giridih, Koderma, Hazaribagh and Dhanbad at the Penman auditorium of the Indian School of Mines.

Rahul’s helicopter landed at the ISM football grounds in a helicopter and he went to the adjoining auditorium, addressed the Youth Congress activists and flew away. About 2500 students of the ISM, who had assembled near the canteen to meet Rahul to seek his support for conversion of their institute, could not come even near him due to tight security arrangements. Classes and examinations were suspended due to security reasons.

Similarly, small children of a school ‘Kartabaya ‘ could not meet him. This tiny school for the children of Korenga slums outside the ISM campus was supposed to be inaugurated by Rahul. The ISM students run the school. Their mothers who work as maids in the neighbouring houses were also waiting for the young leader missed the opportunity to see him.

Rahul interacted with the Youth Congress workers for about 20 minutes and asked them to make the IYC an organisation independent to the parent Congress party.

“Only the hardworking workers would be allowed to become leaders of the organisation and only they would be given the party ticket in the assembly and Lok Sabha elections,” Rahul said pointing out that this experiment had been tried out successfully in Gujarat, TN and Punjab.”

“The Dalits, tribals and youths of the other backward cases would become natural leaders of the Congress. At the booth level party committees, there would be reservations for women, Dalits, OBCs and tribals,” Rahul said.

The conference of “potential candidates” as it was called was attended by about 200 young women from the four districts. It was not open for the Press. Even media photographers were not allowed.

On Thursday, Rahul will attend a Dalit convention at Chatra and an Adivasi Yuva Sammellan in Chaibasa in the Singhbhum district. All these areas are considered to be among the worst Maoist-affected districts in Jharkhand. Chatra has been included in the central government’s pilot project to fight Maoist guerrillas.