Will abide by the party decision: Rahul on his fight from Amethi

Will abide by the party decision: Rahul on his fight from Amethi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that the decision of his contesting the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi will be taken by the party.

During a joint press conference of INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, the Gandhi scion was asked about his nomination from Amethi. In response to the question, Gandhi said that he will “abide by the party’s decision”.

“On Amethi, the party will decide. Whatever order I get, I will abide by that. In our party, these decisions are taken in the CEC (Central Election Committee) meeting,” he said.

Amethi, one of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, has been a Congress stronghold until 2019 when BJP’s Smriti Irani defeated the Gandhi scion by a margin of over 50,000 votes.

Rahul Gandhi won the seat in 2004, 2009 and in 2014 when he defeated then-debutant Irani by a margin of over one lakh votes.

Gandhi has once again been fielded from Kerala’s Wayanad, a seat he won in the last general elections. In 2019, he contested from Amethi and Wayanad.

This time, the Congress is fighting the Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Samajwadi Party. As per their agreement, the grand old party will contest on 17 seats while the SP will fight from 62 seats and Trinamool Congress has been allocated one seat.

Also, there are speculations that the Congress might field party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s husband Robert Vadra from the constituency.

Earlier this month, Vadra had expressed his desire to contest the seat, saying people of Amethi were troubled by the sitting MP.

“The people of Amethi expect me to represent their constituency if I decide to become a member of Parliament…They are really troubled by the current Member of Parliament, they think they have made a mistake by electing her…,” he told a news agency, adding “I want Priyanka (Gandhi) to become an MP first and then I feel I can also come,” he had said.

Priyanka, on the other hand, is likely to make her poll debut from Raebareli, another Congress stronghold in UP. The seat was represented by her mother Sonia Gandhi but the latter has moved to the Rajya Sabha.