Congress election panel members urge Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka to contest from Amethi, Raebareli 

CEC urges Congress to field Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi in Amethi and Rae Bareli for upcoming elections.

Members of the central election committee (CEC) members of the Congress strongly urged the Congress leadership to field former president Rahul Gandhi and General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to contest from Amethi and Rae Bareli. The final decision was left Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and the Gandhi siblings.

The two seats go to polls in the fifth phase and vote will be cast on May 20th. May 3rd is the last day to file nominations. 

Mr. Gandhi stood from Wayanad, for which votes was cast along with 20 seats of Kerala on April 26th. Sources said that there will be no further meeting on the issue. Former President and Chairperson of Congress Parliamentary Party, Sonia Gandhi was present at the meeting, did not express any opinion on the issue. 

The demand to have the Gandhi siblings contest from these two seats has been growing within the party, which feels, that leaving Uttar Pradesh that plays a decisive role in picking the government at centre, with 80 Lok Sabha seats, could have sent a wrong message and would have conceded the Hindi heartland to BJP. The Hindu had reported on April 25, Congress’s UP in-charge Avinash Pande’s remarks, where he said, that there was a unanimous demand from the cadres. “There is an unanimous demand with folded hands by the Congress workers and people from Raebareli, Amethi and other parts of Uttar Pradesh that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi must contest.”  

Mr. Gandhi has represented Amethi thrice in a row, after contesting from here for the first time in 2004. In 2019 he had contested two Lok Sabha constituencies- Wayanad and Amethi. In Amethi, Union Minister and senior BJP leader Smriti Irani defeated Mr. Gandhi by a margin of 55120 votes. 

If Ms. Vadra agrees to CEC’s appeal to contest from Rae Bareli then this will be her first electoral contest. This seat was vacated by her mother Sonia Gandhi, after she opted out of Lok Sabha election, choosing to enter Parliament via Rajya Sabha. 

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 2004 elections, she shifted to Gandhi family’s pocket borough — Rae Bareli, vacating Amethi in favour of her son Rahul Gandhi.