Maintaining suspense over their candidates for the Amethi and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, Congress general secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday said party president Mallikarjun Kharge would finalise the candidates for the two seats, and a decision would be in place in 24 hours.
“The Congress Election Committee empowered Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to decide the candidates for Amethi and Rae Bareli and he will take the decision soon. You will know in the next 24 hours,” Mr. Ramesh said at a press conference in Delhi.
On why there was a delay in taking a decision and if the Congress was “scared” of fielding former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary Priyanka Gandhi from those seats, Mr. Ramesh said, “There is no delay. Has the BJP announced its candidates in Rae Bareli? Smriti Irani is a sitting MP. Nobody is scared, discussions are ongoing. There is no delay, there is time till May 3.”
Mr. Gandhi had earlier said that he would follow “whatever order” he got from the party.
At its April 27 meeting, the Central Election Committee, heeding the suggestion of the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit, strongly urged the Gandhi siblings to contest from the two seats, though it left the final decision to Mr. Kharge.
May 3 is the last day for filing nominations for the two seats that go to the polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election on May 20.
Various conclusions are being reached based on Mr. Gandhi and Ms. Vadra’s schedule for the next two days. On May 3, Mr. Gandhi is scheduled to address a rally in Pune.
In 2019, Mr. Gandhi lost the Amethi seat that he had been representing for 15 years to Ms. Irani, who filed her nomination papers on Monday. Mr. Gandhi is also in the race from Wayanad, which went to the polls in the second phase on April 26.
Rae Bareli seat was previously held by Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who opted out of the election race this time. Ms. Gandhi contested her first Lok Sabha election in 1999 from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh and Bellary in Karnataka. She gave up Bellary to retain Amethi, which her husband Rajiv Gandhi represented in four consecutive elections. In the 2004 election, she shifted to the Gandhi family’s pocket borough of Rae Bareli, vacating Amethi in favour of her son Rahul Gandhi.
The Congress has won Rae Bareli 17 times since the first general elections. The seat was first represented by Feroze Gandhi and later on three occasions by Indira Gandhi. In 1977, Janata Party leader Raj Narain had famously defeated Indira Gandhi here. The BJP won the seat in the 1996 and 1998 elections.
