Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is holding the Rae Bareli seat vacated by mother Sonia Gandhi after leaving Wayanad. His sister Priyanka Gandhi is standing in Wayanad. This decision was taken in the Congress meeting on Monday.
Rahul said, it was difficult for me to take this decision. Because the people of Waynad stand by me. I have a spiritual relationship with the people of Rae Bareli and Waynad. I am leaving Wayanad. Priyanka will contest from Waynad.
Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, AICC General Secretary (Organization) KC Venugopal were present in the meeting organized at Congress President Mallikarjun Kharg’s house.
Rahul has won record votes in Rae Bareli. Sonia was a member of Parliament in this seat till 2019. Before that, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was the Congress MP from Rae Bareli.
However, in this old base of Congress, Rahul got more votes than mother Sonia this year. He lost the BJP candidate by almost four lakh votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Rahul lost from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi but won Kerala’s Wayanad. Now after winning in Rae Bareli, Rahul left that Waynad.
After winning 44 seats in 2014 and 52 seats in 2019, the Congress has won 99 seats in the Lok Sabha elections and has regained the status of the main opposition party. As a result, the post of ‘Leader of Opposition’ is going to return to the Lok Sabha after a decade.
It was decided in the meeting of the Congress Working Committee on June 8 that Rahul, who won by a margin of more than three and a half lakhs from Kerala’s Waynad and Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli seats, is the party’s ‘choice’. But there is still no official message from Rahul or his party in this regard.
