NEW DELHI: After days of suspense, Congress on Friday named Rahul Gandhi as its candidate from its traditional bastion of Raebareli Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi is pitted against the BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh. Rahul currently represents Wayanad in the Lok Sabha while Smriti Irani is bidding for a fresh term from Amethi. Raebareli was held by Sonia Gandhi who became a member of Rajya Sabha. The Congress party has also named Kishori Lal Sharma, a party loyalist from Amethi, the seat Rahul Gandhi lost in the 2019 general elections to BJP leader Smriti Irani. Sonia Gandhi contested elections from here in 1999 before passing the baton on to Rahul in 2004. Irani had earlier filed her nomination as the BJP candidate for Amethi. These seats are going to polls in the fifth phase on May 20. Rahul represented Amethi in the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2019. His father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, too, was an elected member of Amethi in the Lower House from 1981 till his death in 1991. Friday is the last date for filing nominations for the seats that will go to the polls on May 20 in the fifth phase of the seven-phase general elections. The party has won the Congress bastion in all but three Lok Sabha elections since 1951. Before Sonia Gandhi, former Indira Gandhi had won from Raebareli three times. The constituency also elected Indira’s husband and Congress leader Feroze Gandhi twice, in 1952 and 1957. A member of the Nehru-Gandhi family has not contested the seat just twice, in 1962 and 1999. Both constituencies are traditional strongholds of the Gandhi-Nehru family, with its members holding these seats for decades. The Congress, which is contesting 17 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh as part of the seat-sharing deal with the Samajwadi Party (SP), has announced candidates for all the seats barring Amethi and Raebareli. Rahul’s defeat in Amethi, once considered a Congress ‘pocket borough’, at the hands of Smriti Irani in the 2019 polls was seen as a significant blow to the party’s national prestige.
