On 31 March, Congress president Rahul Gandhi announced that he will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from the Wayanad parliamentary seat in Kerala, besides Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
The decision has attracted a lot of analyses.
Speaking to the Bloomberg Quint, Congress spokesperson Salman Soz said that there was strong demand from the southern states to field Rahul Gandhi as a candidate and the decision is an effort on the party’s party to make an outreach to them.
Denying the BJP’s charge that Rahul is apprehensive of losing the Amethi seat, he said that the Congress President will win by a margin of at least 3 lakh votes there. “This is not safe, but aggressive politics by Rahul Gandhi,” he said, also pointing out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi too had contested two seats in the 2014 elections.
Senior journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said that he was not convinced with the comparison with Modi’s 2014 decision.
“UP for BJP in 2014 is not Kerala for Congress in 19. The message that goes out to voters and cadre is that Wayanad is a plan B,” said Mukhopadhyay.
He drew an analogy for Rahul’s decision to Indira Gandhi fighting the Medak seat in Andhra Pradesh in 1980 and Sonia Gandhi contesting the Bellary seat in Karnataka in 1999, apart from their traditional seats.
“In both cases, they were not certain. Similarly, Rahul Gandhi knows that his vote share shrunk from 70 percent in 2009 to 47 percent in 2014.”
Senior journalist Ashutosh however said that the contest in Amethi will be easier for Gandhi this time as he will not have to fight SP, BSP and AAP, unlike in 2014.
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