With Friday being the last day for filing nominations for the Amethi and Rae Bareli seats in Uttar Pradesh that go to the polls on May 20, sources said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had a meeting with senior leader Rahul Gandhi at Shivamogga in Karnataka, where the two addressed an election rally.
There was no information on the outcome of the meeting. There is intense speculation that Mr. Gandhi may return to Amethi, a seat he lost in 2019 to Union Minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani.
Mr. Gandhi had won the seat in 2004, 2009, and 2014. In 2019, he contested from Wayanad in addition to Amethi. This time too, he is in the fray from Wayanad.
In the absence of any official confirmation, there is also speculation that Mr. Gandhi could shift to Rae Bareli, which is deemed to be a “safer seat”. His mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi represented the seat from 2004. In this election, she opted out of the Lok Sabha election race, choosing to enter Parliament through Rajya Sabha instead.
The Congress has won Rae Bareli 17 times since the first general elections. The seat was first represented by Feroze Gandhi and later on three occasions by Indira Gandhi. In 1977, Janata Party leader Raj Narain famously defeated Indira Gandhi here. The BJP won the seat in the 1996 and 1998 elections.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s name has also been doing the rounds for one of the two seats. On Friday, Ms. Vadra is scheduled to address a roadshow in Fatehpur Sikri, some 500 km away from both Amethi and Rae Bareli.
Sources, however, claimed that she remains reluctant to make her electoral debut. To at least two Opposition leaders, Ms. Vadra, at the INDIA bloc rally in Delhi on on March 30, ruled out the possibility of contesting from Rae Bareli or Amethi.
