Akhilesh Yadav, MP and son of Mulayam Singh Yadav, campaigns for the Samajwadi Party candidate in Rae Bareli. (PTI)

Lucknow/Rae Bareli, April 29: The reservation storm has unleashed a war of words but Rahul Gandhi knows better than to open his mouth too early.

“It is a very complex issue,” he told reporters as he travelled the dusty tracks of his mother’s battleground. “Both sides have valid points.”

The comment came after the Amethi MP was asked what he thought of the issue that has angered upper-caste students and sent doctors and aspiring medics on a path of confrontation with the Centre.

In Delhi, striking medics held talks with school and college students to gather support for a “huge demonstration” against the move to reserve 27 per cent seats for OBC students in educational institutions. In Lucknow, Bangalore and Calcutta, doctors showed solidarity by observing fasts and wearing black badges to work.

Asked if he would intervene in the proposed talks between students and the human resource development ministry, Rahul said: “I am still in the process of learning things in politics. All I can do is to learn the issues involved by talking to the students.”

Sources said Rahul, who has been campaigning for his mother Sonia Gandhi for the May 8 bypoll, kept in touch with his loyalists in Delhi for information on the issue.

Reservation wasn’t the only topic that tested the young MP’s skills. After creating a flutter by hinting that he might take care of next year’s Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh if asked to, he appeared to suggest he was not in a hurry to take up any organisational post.

“As I said earlier (in Hyderabad), I see a distinction between doing work and holding a post. I am more than ready to do any work I am told to do. As far as a post is concerned, I will only take it up when I have done adequate work,” he said.

“You guys like sort of distorting,” he added, when asked about his remarks that he would play an “active role” in reviving the party in the state. “I said my stance is I am a soldier of the Congress party. If I am ordered by my seniors to do something, I will do it.”

The party soldier in Rahul yesterday saw him clamber on to a bullock cart as he campaigned, accompanied by former Rae Bareli MP Satish Sharma and Ashoke Singh, an MLA. Ram Prakash Pandey, a local party leader, drove the cart.

Rahul held on to a bamboo log as the cart lurched over dusty roads of Kudwal village.