- Monday, March 03, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Speculation is rife over the future of Wayanad, the parliamentary constituency in the southern Indian state of Kerala which fell vacant recently following the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi, who held it since his win in the 2019 general elections.
However, the Election Commission of India, which on Wednesday (29) announced the next election in the southern state of Karnataka on May 10 and a by-election for the Jalandhar parliamentary constituency, did not mention anything about Wayanad.
The poll body chief said all vacancies till February 2023 have been cleared while the notification for the Wayanad constituency came in March.
“We have cleared vacancies till February. This vacancy was notified in March. A 30-day period has been given for appeal. We are not in a hurry,” chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar told reporters in New Delhi.
Gandhi, 52, was disqualified from the constituency on March 24 following his conviction by a court in the western state of Gujarat in a defamation case and two-year jail term that came with it. He was also given 30 days to appeal the sentence. If any higher court puts the sentence on hold, Gandhi will get his parliamentary membership back, the Congress said.
Kumar cited the Representation of People Act, 1951, to say by-polls need to be held within six months of any constituency falling vacant.
The Congress had prepared for a legal battle if the poll body had announced a by-poll for Wayanad on Wednesday, NDTV reported.
In a similar case, Lakshadweep MP Mohammad Faizal of the Nationalist Congress Party, who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in an attempted murder case, got back his parliamentary membership two months after the Kerala High Court suspended his sentence.
The poll body was forced to withhold a by-election to Faisal’s constituency in January after the Kerala court suspended his sentence. Sources told NDTV that the polling authorities wanted to avoid a similar situation in Wayanad.
