New Delhi: All attention within the Congress circles shifted to the Amethi parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh after the grand old party announced that Rahul Gandhi will again contest from his Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in Kerala. Before the Congress announced its first list of 39 Lok Sabha candidates on Friday, there was intense speculation that Rahul may contest the Amethi seat he had lost in 2019 along with a seat from a southern state to strike a national balance.
Rahul had made his debut in active politics when he entered the Lok Sabha for the first time from Amethi, a Gandhi family bastion, in 2004 and continued to represent the parliamentary constituency till 2019. Party leaders had expected that Rahul would choose a seat either in Telangana or Karnataka, where the Congress has come to power in the past years.
However, with Rahul choosing Wayanad again, the Telangana and Karnataka options have been closed and all focus has shifted to Amethi, where the grand old party managers sense a huge anti-incumbency against sitting BJP MP and union minister Smriti Irani. According to party insiders, Rahul’s candidature from Wayanad in 2019 had provided a huge boost to the Congress prospects in Kerala.
Speaking to ETV Bharat, AICC secretary and Kerala MLA PC Vishnunadh said, “In 2019, we won 19 out of 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala because of Rahul Gandhi contesting from Wayanad. His candidature helped the party win neighbouring seats like Kasargod, Pallakad, Kannur and Vadagara. Before that, Congress used to win a maximum of 13 or 14 seats. He won the election with a historic margin of over 4 lakh votes. We are confident that he will repeat the same victory margin this time as well,”.
“Wayanad people gave Rahul their love and affection in 2019. Since then, he has nurtured the constituency very well. During Covid pandemic he helped the locals a lot. The people were also demanding that Rahul should contest from Wayanad again. He funded a lot of development work there. He considers Wayanad as his second home,” he said.
According to the AICC functionary, CPI candidate from Wayanad Annie Raja was not a big challenge for Rahul. “Every party has a right to put up their candidates. We respect that but Rahul Gandhi will win again with the same margin,” said Vishnunadh. According to the AICC functionary, the Congress had lost the Alappuzha seat in 2019 from where the party has fielded AICC general secretary organization KC Venugopal this time.
“If Venugopal had contested from Alapuzzha in 2019, we would have won all the 20 Lok Sabha seats. This time, we will win Alapuzzha also,” said Vishnunadh.
According to Venugopal, who announced the first list of candidates, the selection was based on the winnability of the aspirants. Besides having a mix of youth and experience, the party also considered the organizational work and grassroots connect before finalizing the names. As far as caste representation was considered, the list of 39 names had 15 candidates from the general category and 24 from the SC, ST, OBC and minorities. Among the candidates, 12 were under 50 years of age while 8 were between 50-60 years and 7 between 71 to 76 years.
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