RAE BARELI: A sea of people, jubilant and boisterous, cheered former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi outside the district headquarters on Friday as he filed his nomination papers for the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat, the third-generation Gandhi to contest from the seat.
The Congress named Rahul Gandhi as the party candidate from Rae Bareli and Kishori Lal Sharma from Amethi on Friday morning, hours before the deadline to file the nomination papers was to end.
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Rahul reached the district headquarters with his mother, Sonia Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge and sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, to file his papers. Rahul Gandhi, who is already in the Lok Sabha fray from Kerala’s Wayanad, was reluctant to contest for a second seat but gave in at the insistence of party leaders and alliance partner, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav.
Also Read: Why Congress fielded Rahul Gandhi from Rae Bareli
Rahul has come to fight on the Gandhi family’s pocket borough at a time when the party is struggling to revive its fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Samajwadi Party leaders said party chief Akhilesh Yadav had conveyed to the Congress that it would hurt the Opposition alliance if the Congress top leaders don’t contest from any of the two seats, Amethi and Rae Bareli.
On Friday after he landed at Fursatganj from Delhi, Rahul Gandhi headed straight to the house of late Gaya Prasad Shukla to perform a puja before filing his nomination papers, a tradition that was started by Indira Gandhi when she first came to fight the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha election in 1967.
The Gandhis have represented Rae Bareli for 38 years, starting with his grandfather Feroze Gandhi who won the seat in 1952 and 1957. Rahul’s relatives Arun Nehru and Shiela Kaul have also represented this seat.
To be sure, the BJP won Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat in 1996 and 1998 when the Congress fielded little-known Vikram Kaul and Deepa Kaul. Its vote share has risen since 2004 when it ended up in fourth place. In 2019, the BJP’s vote share increased to 38.36, up from 21.05% in 2014.
