May 05, 2024 04:39 PM IST
The Congress has fielded Rahul Gandhi from the Rae Bareli seat vacated by Sonia Gandhi, while on his former Amethi seat, family loyalist KL Sharma will contest.
Businessman Robert Vadra on Sunday responded to the BJP’s jibe that the “Rahul Gandhi camp” in the Congress party was sidelining both Vadra and his wife, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
On his Facebook profile, he wrote that “no force can engineer a split in the family.”
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“No power, positions of politics can get between our family. We all have, we will, and we shall always work for the people and betterment of our great nation. Thank you to everyone for your support and best wishes. Will help as many people as I can, through my public service always,” Vadra stated.
On Saturday, a day after the grand old party announced Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Rae Bareli and nominated Gandhi family loyalist KL Sharma from Amethi, the ruling BJP had taken a dig at Vadra.
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“Spare a moment for Robert Vadra, who despite claiming immense popularity in Amethi, was overlooked for the seat. It is obvious that the Rahul Gandhi camp is systematically marginalising both, Priyanka Vadra and her husband, in the Congress. How soon before the sister rebels?” BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
It took the Congress until the final day of nominations for Amethi and Rae Bareli, to declare its candidates for the seats. The two Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh are synonymous with the party’s “first family,” the Gandhis.
It was being speculated that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will finally make her electoral debut from one of the two seats, but she eventually opted not to contest to keep herself free to campaign across the country. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi, who has already contested from Kerala’s Wayanad, from where he is the sitting MP, chose Rae Bareli instead of Amethi, from where he made his poll debut (2004) and won two more terms (2009, 2014) but lost to the BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019.
In February, the siblings’ mother, ex-Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, vacated the Rae Bareli seat as she has not been keeping well, and became a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan.
In Amethi, meanwhile, the BJP has again fielded Irani, the constituency’s 2014 runner-up and its current representative, while in Rae Bareli, the ruling party has given ticket to UP minister Dinesh Pratap Singh, who brought down Sonia Gandhi’s winning margin in 2019, when she emerged as the Congress’ sole Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh.
(With ANI inputs)
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