Rahul Gandhi, who was MP for Wayanad till a few months ago, on Thursday compared his feelings after visiting the landslide-hit area to the emotions he had felt 33 years ago when his father Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.

“I feel how I felt when my father died,” the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha told reporters after spending several hours visiting the disaster sites, relief camps and a hospital.

“That I have seen so many people, I remember what I felt when my father died. Here people have lost not just the father. They have lost the whole family, (the) entire family — brother, sister, mother, father. I know what I felt (when his father died), and this is much worse than that,” he said.

“And it’s not one person who is feeling it, but thousands of people who are feeling it.”

Rahul, who represented Wayanad in the Lok Sabha for five years from 2019, retained the seat in 2024 but chose to keep his other seat, Rae Bareli, instead.

On Thursday, he was accompanied by his sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who will be the party candidate for the Wayanad parliamentary by-election.

Priyanka echoed Rahul, saying: “You can only imagine the kind of pain the people
are suffering.”

With brother and sister were Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal and the Kerala leader of the Opposition, V.D. Satheesan.

The group interacted with relief camp inmates and patients at the Wayanad Institute of Medical Sciences in Meppadi, about 15km from the epicentre of Tuesday’s landslides that is so far estimated to have claimed at least 290 lives.

“I just have no words,” Priyanka told reporters at the hospital.

“Tomorrow, we are thinking of sitting down and charting out how many affected people there are, what we can do and how we can assist, especially the children who are left on their own,” she said, as Rahul nodded in agreement.

“Most of them are saying they don’t want to go back and live in the same area because it’s not the first time this has happened. So I think we have to think of some solution where they can be rehabilitated in safe places,” Priyanka added.

The Congress leaders had flown to Kannur before being driven to Wayanad, arriving around noon. They went straight to Chooralmala, where the army was building a temporary bridge to connect Mundakkai, the village uphill that first bore the brunt of the landslides. Both villagers have almost been wiped out. The bridge was later opened for relief vehicles.

Rahul and the rest walked across a narrow temporary footbridge to reach Mundakkai, before walking back and heading to the relief camps and the Meppadi hospital where nearly 200 survivors are under medical care.

Rahul and Priyanka spoke to some of the survivors at the relief camps set up in the Government Higher Secondary School and St Joseph’s Higher Secondary School in Meppadi.

They had postponed their visit from Wednesday because of heavy rain in the district.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, too, visited the affected areas and inspected the temporary bridge the army was building.

He had earlier chaired an all-party meeting at the Wayanad collectorate and demanded the Centre declare Tuesday’s disaster a national calamity and provide adequate funds for relief and rehabilitation.