Rahul Gandhi’s Amethi candidature is being called for, Congress poll panel is set to meet today

GG News Bureau

New Delhi, 7th March. People who advocate for tickets at the Congress headquarters on 24 Akbar Road in New Delhi are rumored to never succeed because the true power lies elsewhere.

However, during election season, party employees from all over the nation still swarm to the headquarters.

In anticipation of this summer’s national elections, candidates have been lining up at the party headquarters with their resumes for tickets, even though the party has not yet made a decision regarding them, including whether Rahul Gandhi will run for office from Amethi again. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the front-runner with its initial list of 195 candidates, although two of them later withdrew from consideration.

The Central Election Committee of the Congress is set to convene for the first time on Thursday at 6 p.m. in order to choose candidates. The call for Rahul Gandhi to run from Amethi, where he served as representative from 2004 to 2019 but was unsuccessful in the most recent election, is becoming louder.

Speaking about his long-standing relationship with Amethi, Gandhi arrived in the city on February 19 as part of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. Gandhi emphasized his love for Amethi while discussing social justice and unemployment.

Gandhi will run from his previous seat, according to Amethi district Congress chief Pradeep Singhal, even though party members have begun promoting his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in nearby Raebareli.

According to people with knowledge of the situation, party leaders are also debating whether to field Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Rahul Gandhi from Raebareli against Union minister Smriti Irani in Amethi.

Tapas Ray, a member of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal, left the party on Wednesday and joined the BJP, hurting the TMC, which has come under fire in the state for supporting its local functionary Sheikh Shahjahan, who was apprehended this week after going on the run for several weeks. Abhijit Gangopadhyay, a judge on the Calcutta High Court, resigned the day before Ray left to join the BJP.

Following his defection from Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP), Ritesh Pandey of Ambedkar Nagar has been fielded by the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Since Mayawati won a complete majority to become chief minister for the fourth time in 2007 the BSP’s base of support has dwindled. In the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly in 2022, it might win just one seat.

Together with the Samajwadi Party (SP), the BSP ran in the 2019 national elections, increasing its seat count from zero to ten. The alliance ended up blaming SP for the disastrous poll. On February 19, Mayawati declared that the BSP would stand alone in the 2024 national elections.