Chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party and former party president Sonia Gandhi will be filing her nomination for the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan on Wednesday. Ms. Gandhi, the MP from Rae Bareli, is currently serving her fifth term in Lok Sabha, and this will be her first stint in the Upper House. Her decision to opt out of Lok Sabha race has triggered speculation that her daughter and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra could finally make her electoral debut from Rae Bareli.
The 77-year-old Ms. Gandhi has been battling illness for a long time and has taken a step back from many party engagements, including recent election campaigns. Sources said her son Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge will accompany her when she files her nomination in Jaipur.
The party took a strategic call to field Ms. Gandhi from Rajasthan instead of Telangana or Karnataka to ensure that it does not limit itself to the southern boundaries. In the 2019 General Election, Mr. Gandhi, then the party president, had contested from Amethi, which he had represented thrice, and also the Wayanad Lok Sabha election in Kerala. He lost Amethi to senior BJP leader Smriti Irani, which accelerated the party’s recession in the Hindi heartland. For two consecutive General Elections, the party failed to win a single seat in Rajasthan. It also had dismal performances in other Hindi heartland States of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh.
“Our president Mallikarjun Kharge comes from Karnataka, our former president Rahul Gandhi is an MP from Wayanad. We can’t have another former president to represent a southern State, as that would mean we are entirely giving up on the electoral battle in the north,” a senior Congress leader explained.
With Ms. Gandhi’s decision to opt out of Lok Sabha election, the Congress’ corridors are abuzz with speculation over who will replace her in Rae Bareli. Both Mr. Gandhi and Ms. Vadra are frontrunners. There is a strong sentiment both within and outside the party that Mr. Gandhi should not seek a re-election from Wayanad, where he will face a Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate. It has been argued that for the Congress to stay relevant in the Hindi heartland, Mr. Gandhi must contest from one of the northern constituencies against the BJP. Given its deep roots in Rae Bareli, many feel that it could be safe bet for Mr. Gandhi.
Ms. Vadra, meanwhile, despite pressure from the party, has not yet made her electoral debut. There is, yet again, the demand that she contest the 2024 General Elections but so far, sources said, she remains non-committal.
Ms. Gandhi contested the first Lok Sabha election in 1999 from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh and Ballari in Karnataka. She gave up Ballari to retain Amethi, which her late husband, Rajiv Gandhi, represented in four consecutive elections. In the 2004 elections, she shifted to the Gandhi family’s pocket borough, Rae Bareli, vacating Amethi in favour of her son Rahul Gandhi.
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 the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In 1977 Janata Party leader Raj Narain had famously defeated Indira Gandhi here, and the BJP won the seat in the 1996 and 1998 elections.
Three Rajya Sabha seats are falling vacant in Rajasthan upon the retirement on April 3 of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Minister and BJP leader Bhupendra Yadav. The third seat fell vacant following the resignation of the BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Kirori Lal Meena, who contested and won in the Assembly election. Mr. Meena is currently the State’s Agriculture Minister in the State. The Congress will win only one of these three vacancies. The BJP declared its candidates for two seats on Monday.
