(dpa) - Hundreds of people turned out to greet Congress Party lawmaker Rahul Gandhi as he embarked on a trip labelled Discovery of India from a small hamlet in eastern Orissa state Friday, news reports said.
Gandhi, 37, is son of Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. His great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was India's first prime minister and his grandmother Indira Gandhi, possibly the most famous premier.
Orissa is one of India's most backward states in terms of industrial development and human development indicators but is rich in mineral and forest resources.
Gandhi's tour is being seen as an attempt by the Congress Party to woo back its traditional vote bank of poor and marginalized rural people and at the same time project the 37-year-old as a future leader of India as the party goes into election mode.
General elections which are scheduled to be held in 2009 in India but may happen earlier with the left allies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government threatening to withdraw support over the India-United States nuclear deal.
The Congress Party is the leading member of Singh's United Progressive Alliance (UPA), a minority alliance that rules with the support of the left parties.
Rahul Gandhi began his tour on Friday from the tribal village of Sinapali in Nuapada district and is scheduled to cover 13 districts of the state over the next four days, including several areas of Kalahandi district, before rounding up with a meeting with party functionaries in state capital Bhubaneshwar, PTI and IANS news agencies reported.
Kalahandi was once one of India's most impoverished districts and shot into the limelight in the mid-1980s with a series of famines and deaths by starvation.
Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi had extensively toured the area in 1985 and won the support of the people for initiating a host of developmental activities.
"We are now fighting a new problem, a threat to environment and displacement," Congress Party lawmaker from Kalahandi Bhakta Das was quoted as saying by The Telegraph newspaper.
Das has been spearheading protests against ore refineries and mining projects in the district and hopes Rahul Gandhi will take up these issues.
Gandhi is scheduled to visit forest areas and interact with tribal leaders over the next few days.
Appointed Congress Party general secretary in 2007, Gandhi was elected member of parliament from Amethi in northern Uttar Pradesh state, a family stronghold, in the last general election in 2004.