Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s support to Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur is a well-calibrated attempt by the Congress party to reconnect with the aspirational youth who had moved away from it in the wake of an anti-corruption movement launched by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal in 2011. From 2014 onwards, the Congress and its vice president have made several desperate attempts to reach out to the students by taking up their issues, in and outside Parliament. The students had urged the Congress vice president to check the “assault on institutions of higher learning”. On January 30, 2016, he joined a protest march past midnight at the university campus by students demonstrating against Vemula’s suicide. The Congress vice president then visited the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on February 13, 2016, a day after JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested.

Source: Hindustan Times February 28, 2017 08:37 UTC