NEW DELHI: The Congress on Sunday announced 11 more candidates for the Lok Saha polls amid intense speculation that former party president Rahul Gandhi will file a nomination to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi after the second phase of elections, which is slated for April 26.
Gandhi is seeking a mandate for the second time from Kerala’s Wayanad, which is going to polls in the second phase. It was also speculated that Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will make her electoral debut from the party’s Uttar Pradesh stronghold of Rae Bareli, a seat earlier held by her mother Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress Central Election Committee, which met earlier in the day, was expected to decide on candidates for Haryana, the remaining seats in Bihar, Punjab, and the crucial seats Amethi and Rae Bareli in UP. However, sources said that the UP seats were not on the agenda of the meeting. The meeting was chaired by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by former party chief Sonia Gandhi, senior leaders Salman Khurshid and Ambika Soni, among others.
Several names were discussed for Punjab and Bihar and a final decision on key seats was left for the Congress president to take, the sources said. They added that the next list of candidates would be announced “very soon”.
While the Congress is contesting all the 13 seats in Punjab, in Bihar it is set to field candidates on nine seats and is part of the Mahagathbandhan formation with RJD and the Left parties.
Later, the party released the names of nine candidates for Andhra Pradesh seats and two candidates for Jharkhand Lok Sabha constituencies. The party will field Yashashwini Sahay from the Ranchi seat.
Though the CEC did not discuss Amethi and Rae Bareli seats, the sources said that Rahul Gandhi is likely to file the nomination for Amethi, after April 26.
Last week, Gandhi said he would abide by his party’s decision on Amethi’s candidature.
At a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Gandhi said, “On Amethi, the party will decide. Whatever order I get, I will abide by that. In our party, these decisions are taken in the CEC meeting”.
Though Gandhi represented Amethi for three straight terms earlier, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he was defeated by Union Minister Smriti Irani by over 50,000 votes.
Speaking to this newspaper, Congress leader Dinesh Singh said that both seats are considered bastions of the Gandhi family and the state units of the party have demanded that the siblings contest from there. “We are confident that they will contest. There is anger against the current MP and the wind is in our favour,” he said.
