Ending days of suspense, the Congress has finally announced that Rahul Gandhi will contest from the Raebareli Lok Sabha constituency, the seat held earlier by his mother Sonia Gandhi.
The Amethi Lok Sabha seat will be contest by Kishori Lal Sharma, a Gandhi family loyalist.
According to sources, Rahul Gandhi will arrive by a special flight at Fursatganj airport at 10:30 a.m. on Friday and will file his nomination papers at 12:15 p.m.
He will thereafter leave for Pune. Rahul Gandhi's decision to shift to Raebareli seat has averted a keen contest in Amethi where Union Minister and BJP MP Smriti Irani is seeking a second term.
In Raebareli, he will be facing Dinesh Pratap Singh, a veteran Congressman, who is the BJP candidate this time.
No Gandhis in Amethi
With Rahul Gandhi choosing Rae Bareli over Amethi this time, it seems that the Gandhis have given up a constituency considered to be their bastion.
Amethi has a history with the Gandhi clan. When Sanjay Gandhi chose Amethi to contest his first election in 1980, the main reason was that the region was steeped in backwardness and he took it up as a challenge to develop the constituency. The same year, Sanjay Gandhi died in an air crash and Rajiv Gandhi decided to take over his brother's constituency in the subsequent by-election in 1981.
For a decade, till Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, he held Amethi and nurtured it with attention and affection. Even as Prime Minister, he would drive around in his jeep from village to village, talking to people and sharing meals with them.
After his demise, Capt Satish Sharma -- a close family friend -- won Amethi in 1991 bypoll and 1996 also. In 1998, BJP's Dr Sanjay Singh won the seat but when Sonia Gandhi made her debut in politics, she wrested back Amethi in 1999.
In 2004, Sonia Gandhi moved to Rae Bareli and Rahul Gandhi took over Amethi which he won till 2019 when he was defeated by Smriti Irani of BJP. The problem of Amethi is strikingly similar to the one faced by Rae Bareli.
As things stand today, three of the five Assembly seats in Amethi are held by BJP (Tiloi, Salon and Jagdishpur) while two are with Samajwadi Party (Gauriganj and Amethi).
Gauriganj MLA Rakesh Pratap Singh switched his loyalty to BJP in the recent Rajya Sabha elections which means that BJP now holds sway over almost four seats.
Kishori Lal Sharma, known as a Gandhi loyalist who acted as a bridge between the family and the constituency, has been pushed to the forefront now.
(With inputs from IANS)
