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Restive opposition camp breathes easy with Rahul Gandhi’s Rae Bareli candidature
With this, the Congress and the SP have named their candidates on all 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, of which the SP is contesting on 63 and the Congress on 17
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Congress and Samajwadi Party (SP) camps heaved a sigh of relief and broke out in jubilation on Friday after a Gandhi family member finally jumped into the poll fray in Uttar Pradesh after months of suspense and tense speculations over the Congress candidacies for Rae Bareli and Amethi parliamentary constituencies.
Once a family bastion, Smriti Irani defeated Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and with sitting Rae Bareli MP Sonia Gandhi entering the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan, the opposition camp was in a huddle over the family pocket borough of Rae Bareli. With the announcement on Friday, once again a Gandhi member is contesting for Lok Sabha from the state.
A lot transpired behind the scenes for months, especially over the last three days, before the Congress ended the uncertainty on the last day of filing of nominations for 14 parliamentary seats in UP, including Rae Bareli and Amethi that will go to polls on May 20 in the fifth phase.
SP and its national president Akhilesh Yadav were restive over the perceived concerns that Gandhis for the first time in 25 years might not contest the elections in UP. Yadav, an SP source says, held early morning talks over the phone, separately with Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi, with the appeal that the “the Gandhi family not contesting Rae Bareli and Amethi would be detrimental to the prospects of the INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh and the country”.
However, there was no definite sign from the Congress to the SP about the candidates for the two seats. On Thursday night, the Congress contacted Yadav to give his opinion on the two constituencies. Yadav reportedly maintained his stance and urged that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi must contest from both.
Prior to this, the Congress held meetings, on Wednesday and Thursday, in Delhi on this matter. The indecision was so complex that some Congress leaders were even asked by the party high command to dial “some politically oriented people in UP” to get their opinions and even suggest alternatives.
The problem was not on the part of the Congress naming Rahul or Priyanka, but the reluctance of the two leaders to contest the elections. The Congress leadership, both in Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi, had been insisting that the bother-sister duo must take on the challenge after (February this year) Sonia Gandhi relinquished her seat.
“Even in a meeting late on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi refused to contest elections from Amethi for he did not want to jeopardise the narrative he painstakingly built of being PM Modi’s opponent and there was no way that he would dilute it by contesting against Smriti Irani. He was somehow persuaded to move to Rae Bareli citing the heritage and bonding the Gandhi family enjoys with locals,” a senior Congress leader said.
Senior party functionary Kishori Lal Sharma being fielded from Amethi did not come as a big surprise to many as his name was doing the rounds, for Rae Bareli, among several other prospective candidates for the two seats alongside former UP Congress MLC Deepak Singh and Congress MLA Aradhana Mishra ‘Mona’.
“There also was palpable anger within SP over Gandhi’s stance, for many in our party thought ‘what is the point of a seat-sharing agreement when the Congress were hesitant on fielding winnable candidates on them?’. Our party had even opined to the Congress that if not the Gandhis, the Congress should at least field its national president Mallikarjun Kharge, a senior Dalit face of the INDIA bloc, as one Gandhi and one tall Dalit leader could have a good impact. However, Rahul Gandhi and KL Sharma are good choices. Our party’s local units as well as the state unit will put all our force behind the two candidates,” said one of SP’s negotiators in the INDIA bloc.
Sharma is a native of Ludhiana in Punjab but has his political base in Amethi and Rae Bareli being a close confidante of the Gandhi family. He began working with the family when Rajiv Gandhi had won the Amethi bypolls after the death of the then Amethi MP and Rajiv’s brother Sanjay Gandhi. Sharma had worked in both Amethi and Rae Bareli for the Gandhis in successive elections since then. He was also Sonia Gandhi’s representative in Rae Bareli since 2004.
UP minister Dinesh Pratap Singh is the BJP candidate from Rae Bareli, a seat the Congress has not lost since 1999.
With this, the Congress and the SP have named their candidates on all 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, of which the SP is contesting on 63 and the Congress on 17.
