The Congress has thrown a curveball by fielding Gandhi loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma from Amethi, a party stronghold since its inception in 1967. The decision came on Friday, the last date for filing nominations for the seat.
In the absence of the Gandhis, KL Sharma was the man who looked after the Amethi and Raebareli constituencies and handled their issues.
Belonging to Ludhiana, KL Sharma entered the political arena of Raebareli and Amethi in 1983 with Rajiv Gandhi. His bond with the family strengthened after the sudden death of Rajiv Gandhi. For years, he has been playing a pivotal role in both the Gandhi turfs.
KL Sharma and Rahul Gandhi, contesting from Amethi and Raebareli respectively, will file their nomination papers on Friday.
Amethi has been the Gandhi family karmabhoomi for generations.
Barring a few elections, this seat has always voted for the Gandhi family. This is why Sanjay Gandhi in 1977, Rajiv Gandhi in 1981, Sonia Gandhi in 1999, and Rahul Gandhi in 2004 chose Amethi over Raebareli for their political debuts.
Rahul Gandhi won from Amethi, defeating the BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2014, but the next general elections saw the latter win.
While Rahul won Kerala’s Wayanad — a seat he is fighting again in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls — this 2019 loss was a big one for both him and the Congress party.
Smriti Irani defeated Rahul Gandhi with a margin of over 55,120 votes.
It was on Rahul Gandhi’s insistence that Sonia Gandhi vacated Amethi and switched to her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi’s constituency Raebareli, in 2004.
In 1981, after the sudden demise of her younger son Sanjay, it was Indira Gandhi who proposed Rajiv Gandhi’s name for the seat in the CEC, well aware that the family bastion needed to be protected.
MACRO-POLITICAL HISTORY OF AMETHI
The Amethi seat was constituted after the second delimitation exercise in India and since 1967 (the first Lok Sabha election after the second delimitation), the Congress party lost this seat only thrice: first in 1977 to the Janta Party candidate Ravindra Pratap Singh, second in 1998 to the BJP’s Sanjay Singh, and third in 2019 to Smriti Irani.
Before that, Rahul Gandhi had won this seat thrice since the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. Prior to that, his mother Sonia Gandhi contested the seat in 1999 and won. Rajiv Gandhi was also introduced electorally from Amethi seat.
He contested the by-election in 1981 after the death of Sanjay Gandhi and won this seat by a huge margin of more than 77 per cent votes.
AMETHI IN NUMBERS
The Amethi parliamentary constituency comprises five assembly constituencies: Tiloi, Salon, Jagdishpur, Gauriganj, and Amethi.
The 2019 Lok Sabha election was significant because both, the Congress and the BJP candidates received more than four lakh votes each, which happened for the first time. Rahul Gandhi did not just lose this seat in 2019, the party trailed in four out of five Assembly constituencies.
The Congress barely led with just over 200 votes in the Amethi Assembly constituency. This was a far cry from the Congress’s historical trend of leading in all five segments.
In the last two assembly elections (2017 and 2022) in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress did not win even one of these five seats.
On the other hand, in assembly constituencies — Tiloi, Salon, and Jagdishpur — the BJP has either won or led since 2017. This is one reason why the Congress took its time to announce its Amethi candidate.
RAHUL’s AMETHI RUN
As Rahul Gandhi won from Amethi in 2004 and 2009, things functioned in a more corporate style, diminishing any direct leader-to-people connection. Slowly, the Gandhi surname lost some of its charisma and traction in Amethi’s lanes.
The saffron party quickly capitalises on this restlessness of voters, who were ready to look elsewhere, and fielded its young firebrand woman leader Smriti Irani in 2014. She lost then but came back to score the biggest political upset of 2019 by defeating Rahul Gandhi.
With the rise of the BJP on the national canvas and Narendra Modi’s halo of invincibility helping the party score bumper victories, Brand Gandhi lost its sheen.
Even as it scored victories in Karnataka and Telangana, the grand old party has been struggling to prove its political relevance after failing to come to power in the Hindi heartland.
The Amethi battle could provide the much-needed morale booster for the Congress when it is beginning to feel it can turn the table on the BJP.
Source Agencies
