- Friday, April 18, 2025
The constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli are known to be strongholds of the Indian National Congress over the decades but neither Rahul Gandhi nor his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is reportedly keen to contest from them.
By: Shubham Ghosh
NOTHING could have been more ironic than the fact that the Indian National Congress, India’s major opposition party, is yet to finalise candidates from two of its historical bastions — Amethi and Rae Bareli — in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Workers and supporters of the party, which is aiming a revival amid the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) dominance in Indian politics, are anxious about the situation, particularly when the elections in those two seats are due on May 20.
While the Congress has tried to put up a brave face saying decisions on the two seats would be taken within a day (deadline for nominations is May 3) and that it was not “scared” to announce its candidates, reports have suggested that neither Rahul Gandhi nor Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — the current generation of India’s politically influential Gandhi family — is eager to contest from the two constituencies that have been its stronghold over generations.
Read: What if opposition defeat Modi in India polls? Well, history doesn’t give hope
According to a report by News18, the Congress leaders believe that it would convey a negative message if either of the Gandhi siblings do not contest from those two constituencies. One journalist wrote in a piece in Moneycontrol that it would be a “massive moral defeat” and “historical blunder” for the Grand-Old Party and might take a while to reverse if the BJP wins both of them.
Read: India elections: Yet another opposition candidate against Modi’s BJP withdraws
It may be mentioned here that the BJP, too, has not announced its candidate from Rae Bareli, which has been vacated by senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi who has now moved to the Rajya Sabha or Upper House of the Indian parliament, but it looks the Congress is more under the scanner for not announcing its candidate there.
Rae Bareli is the only constituency that the Congress had won in Uttar Pradesh, a state which it had dominated in the past, in 2019. In the 2014 polls, it won two with Amethi being the other one.
But why has the party failed to finalise faces in the two key constituencies?
It has been reported that Rahul Gandhi, who lost from Amethi against the BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019 by more than 55,000 votes and retained his parliamentarian status by winning from Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala, has not been to his former constituency in the last five years. If Rahul loses again against Irani, the current minister for women and child development, it could give a major blow to his image as the chief challenger to prime minister Narendra Modi.
Secondly, if Rahul wins both Wayanad and Amethi in this year’s election, he has to forego one and it would not be ideal for him to part ways with Wayanad, where he came back after getting disqualified as an MP last year after his remarks against the Modi surname in an election rally in 2019 saw him getting convicted by a court in the western state of Gujarat.
Rahul had won from Amethi three consecutive times between 2004 and 2014 before the defeat in the last elections.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s entry as a challenger to Irani might make more sense, not only because it would see two high-profile women locking horns but also kick off the former’s electoral journey, something that the Congress supporters had been expecting over decades, eventually.
But given the fact that Priyanka has never contested in an election and putting her in the fray in the dying hours in Amethi might not go to her favour. Witnessing another Gandhi biting the dust in her debut electoral battle is the last thing that the common supporters of the Congress would want to see.
The same applies for Rae Bareli where the BJP is also playing a waiting game. Sonia Gandhi had won the seat consecutively between 2004 and 2019 and the Congress certainly has a big task in finding somebody who can fill her giant shoes.
The Congress is contesting only 17 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh after entering an alliance with the Samajwadi Party, a key player in the state.
The Congress has won the seat 13 out of 16 times since 1967, when it first went to polls. Vidya Dhar Bajpai of the Congress won it in 1967 and 1971 while Ravindra Pratap Singh of the former Janata Party won in 1977.
Sanjay Gandhi, brother of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, won from the constituency in 1980 and after his death the same year, the latter became an MP from there and continued till his assassination in 1991. The Congress’s Satish Sharma won the seat in 1991 (by-poll after Rajiv’s death) and 1996.
The BJP won the seat in 1998 but it was back to the Congress’s fold next year when Sonia Gandhi won. Rahul Gandhi made his electoral debut from the seat in 2004 and continued till 2019 when Irani became the second BJP candidate to win from there.
Rae Bareli is an older constituency than Amethi which has been in existence since 1952, the year India held its first general election. Feroze Gandhi, the husband of former prime minister Indira Gandhi and a Congress leader, was its first MP who also won in 1957. He was succeeded by RP Singh and Bajinath Kureel of the Congress till 1967 when Indira Gandhi became its elected representative. She was the MP from Rae Bareli till 1977 when she lost to Raj Narain of the Janata Party.
Indira was back as the MP from Rae Bareli in 1980 but resigned from there after getting elected from Medak in the modern-day southern state of Telangana. Her party’s Arun Nehru was the MP between 1980 and 1989 and Sheila Kaul won in 1989 and 1991.
The seat then went to the BJP between 1996 and 1999 when Satish Sharma of the Congress wrested it back. In 2004, Sonia Gandhi’s era in Rae Bareli began.
