Congress Leaves Amethi, Rae Bareli Candidate Decision to Mallikarjun Kharge
MUMBAI: The Congress Central Election Committee (CEC) left the decision to select the candidates of Amethi and Rae Bareli to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. At the CEC meeting in the national capital on Saturday, the members demanded that Rahul Gandhi must contest from Amethi against Union Minister Smriti Irani and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra be fielded to contest from her mother Sonia Gandhi’s erstwhile seat, Rae Bareli.
General secretary incharge of Uttar Pradesh Avinash Pande urged the Congress leadership that a decision should be taken at the earliest and that the Gandhi siblings be picked as candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli parliamentary constituencies.
Mr Gandhi has already contested polls from the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, which went to polls on April 26. Voting in both Amethi and Rae Bareli is scheduled for May 20th.
Both Rae Bareli and Amethi are considered to be Gandhi bastions. Though Mr Gandhi won from Amethi in 2004, 2009 and 2014, he lost the parliamentary seat to Ms Irani in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Now the party cadres want the seat to be wrested from the BJP.
Sources say that the next CEC meeting will take place on Monday, in which the candidates for the remaining seats in Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab will be decided.
