Happy that Jairam Ramesh accepted my challenge for Rahul Gandhi: Smriti Irani

Amethi, Feb 19

Union minister Smriti Irani, who has dared Rahul Gandhi to contest against her from Amethi again, on Tuesday ‘thanked’ Gandhi’s Congress colleague, Jairam Ramesh, for ‘accepting’ her challenge on behalf of the former Amethi MP.

“I am happy that Jairam Ramesh has accepted my challenge that Rahul Gandhi is ready to contest elections from Amethi without Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati. Being an ordinary BJP worker, I welcome this challenge. Today, our workers will be waiting for Rahul Gandhi to announce his candidature through CEC today,” Irani, Amethi’s incumbent Lok Sabha MP, told media during a visit to the parliamentary constituency.

Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi, a bastion of the Gandhi family, sent Rahul to Lok Sabha thrice: on his debut in 2004, and then in both 2009 and 2014. In 2014, Irani was the runner-up to the ex-Congress president but reversed the result five years later in one of the biggest upsets in the history of Lok Sabha polls.

In the 2019 polls, the Congress leader stood from a second constituency as well, Kerala’s Wayanad, and won from there, and was thus able to continue as a member of Parliament. The 53-year-old too paid a visit to Amethi, as part of the Uttar Pradesh leg of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.

This was his first visit to his former constituency since that 2019 defeat, and came just ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections, due in April-May.

On Monday, Ramesh, the grand old party’s general secretary, communications, said that voters had realised they made a ‘mistake’ five years ago, though he also stressed that a final decision on his candidature from here will be taken by the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC).

Read more news like this on HindustanTimes.com