With just a day left for the filing of nominations for Phase 5 of the Lok Sabha elections, the suspense over the Congress’s picks for the Amethi and Raebareli constituencies of Uttar Pradesh, once considered a stronghold of the Nehru-Gandhi family, is set to end today.
Speculation has been rife regarding the candidature of former party president Rahul Gandhi and Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for Amethi and Raebareli, respectively.
Rahul Gandhi, who faced an unexpected defeat in Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019, is expected to contest from there again, possibly alongside his current constituency, Kerala’s Wayanad.
The deadline to file nominations for Amethi and Rae Bareli is on Friday (May 3). These seats are going to polls in the fifth phase on May 20.
During a press conference on Wednesday, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said a decision would be made regarding these seats “in the next 24 hours”. He also said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would take the call as he has been authorised by the Congress’s Central Election Committee (CEC) in this regard.
While a large section of the party leadership believes that the Gandhis not contesting from the Hindi heartland would send a negative political message, the perception of potentially three members of the Gandhi family being in Parliament could open up a line of attack from the BJP.
The saffron party has already been taking on the Opposition INDIA bloc over “parivarvaad” (dynastic politics), often arguing that almost all the parties in the alliance are controlled by families.
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Priyanka Gandhi, if she contests, will be the eighth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to enter electoral politics from the Congress. And three members of the Gandhi family will be in Parliament at the same time in a first if she and Rahul win their respective electoral battles. Rahul is contesting from Wayanad again this time. Their mother and Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has recently been elected to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan.
In the 2019 polls, Irani had defeated Rahul from Amethi, although he won from his second constituency, Wayanad, in Kerala. Rahul had won from the Amethi seat three times earlier.