Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday led an 8-kilometre roadshow in the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur district. The event was a close squeak for the party president as a major fire was averted as he waved at the crowd atop his open-roof vehicle.
The incident is said to have taken place at Model Road when the Congress’ cavalcade was passing through, as part of his road-show. Thousands of people were lined up along the main thoroughfare. As seen in the video below, a few Congress workers were holding an ‘aarti thali’ to welcome the Congress chief. In the brouhaha, some balloons which had been released as part of the celebrations, came in contact with the flame of lamp kept on the ‘aarti thali’. As a result, the balloons caught on fire and the gas inside the balloons created a big flash of fire for a moment.
Though no injuries have been reported, the blast left the Congress chief spooked for a while. The police and SPG soon took control of the situation and pushed behind all the workers of the party and the procession continued, deflecting the predicament.
Earlier too, the Congress president has evaded a somewhat similar situation. In 2016, Rahul who was on the Kisan Mahayatra in Uttar Pradesh had, had a narrow escape when his head apparently came in contact with an electrical wire.
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Rahul has a history of facing several hiccups as he struggles to woo voters. In 2016, during the same month-long Kisan Yatra, in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh while, on one hand, he had a man hurling a shoe at him, on the other he had seen people stealing the cots that had been rented for one of the events of the Kisan Yatra.