03 May,2024 08:44 AM IST | New Delhi | mid-day online correspondent
Rahul Gandhi
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will contest the Lok Sabha elections 2024 from the Rae Bareli seat, the constituency held by his mother Sonia Gandhi earlier.
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.
Kishori Lal Sharma, a close aide of the Gandhi family, has also been fielded from the Amethi Lok Sabha seat, the party said in a statement on Friday.
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Sharma was the key person who looked after the two prestigious constituencies in the absence of the Gandhis.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, its current chief Mallikarjun Kharge, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will be in Rae Bareli during the nomination filing, the party said.
Rahul Gandhi and Kishori Lal Sharma will file their nomination papers on Friday, the last date for the filing of nominations for the seats.
The two seats will go to polls on May 20 in the fifth of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections 2024.
Ending days of suspense, the party announced the candidates from the two seats early Friday.
Deliberations had been on in the party since Thursday on the names of the contenders for the two seats, which have been traditionally held by the members of the Gandhi-Nehru family.
The BJP had on Thursday announced Dinesh Pratap Singh as its candidate from Rae Bareli. He had lost to Sonia Gandhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Posters and banners of Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav were also brought late last evening to the Congress office in Gauriganj.
BJP leader Smriti Irani has already filed her nomination papers from Amethi.
The Uttar Pradesh leadership of the Congress had earlier called upon the Gandhi family to contest both the seats.
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.
Rahul Gandhi 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.
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 Gandhi'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.
(With inputs from Agencies)
