Suspense over the Amethi and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seats is mounting, even as May 3 is the deadline for the filing of nominations for the two seats considered as traditional pocket boroughs of Gandhi-Nehru family. As the voting day for Rae Bareli and Amethi approaches on May 20, the Congress is yet to come clear as to who is going to contest from the two seats. Both seats are considered strongholds of the Gandhi family. Rahul Gandhi won from the Amethi Lok Sabha seat in 2004, 2009 and 2014 general elections but was defeated by BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019. In 2019, Rahul Gandhi was also contesting from Kerala’s Wayanad as his safe seat. Rae Bareli, on the other hand, has elected former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi as its MP since 2004. Sonia Gandhi, who was the sole Congress MP to win a Lok Sabha seat from Uttar Pradesh in 2019, has opted for the Rajya Sabha route from Rajasthan.
Speculation has been rife that the party would field its former president Rahul Gandhi – who lost the family bastion in a shock defeat to the BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019 – from Amethi again and he will contest both from there and Kerala’s Wayanad like he did in the last Lok Sabha elections. For Rae Bareli, which was held by Sonia Gandhi since 2004, the name doing the rounds has been of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi, whose electoral debut is expected to enthuse party workers. The move, if it happens, would be strategic also because Rae Bareli was the only seat – out of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 – that the Congress had won in 2019. In a letter dated February 14, 2024, addressed to the people of Rae Bareli, Sonia Gandhi indicated, “I will not contest the next Lok Sabha election due to advancing age and health reasons… I am sure you will take care of me and my family in difficult times as you have been doing up to now.”
Sonia Gandhi’s appeal, urging the people to take care of her family, has been interpreted as an indication that a member of the Gandhi family will contest the polls. During the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance’s first press conference in Ghaziabad on April 17, Rahul Gandhi mentioned that the Congress Central Election Committee would decide on the party’s candidates for Rae Bareli and Amethi, and he would follow the party’s decision on this matter. There are two possibilities here. One is that Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi may contest from Amethi and Rae Bareli. Another is that both may opt out of the fray. The BJP, having fielded Union Minister Smriti Irani from Amethi again, is closely monitoring the Congress’s decisions and may decide its candidate based on the Congress’s choice in Rae Bareli. For now various probabilities with permutations and combinations are doing the rounds.
