The formal decision on Gandhi contesting from Amethi will be taken when the central election committee takes up the party’s probable list for Uttar Pradesh later. Rahul seeking re-election from the safe seat Wayanad shows his disinclination to fight from the old Amethi seat without taking an electoral insurance from the Kerala seat, where Gandhi-led Congress’ main rival BJP is just a marginal player.
The first list has 24 candidates from the OBC-SC-ST minority segments, 15 from the general category. While 12 are below the 50 age bracket, eight are from the 50-60 age group. It includes many sitting MPs.
The first list included 14 of the 15 Congress sitting MPs from Kerala, including Shashi Tharoor, who will now seek his fourth consecutive term from Thiruvananthapuram. Venugopal, currently representing Rajasthan in the Rajya Sabha as the leadership had persuaded him not to seek re-election from Alappuzha in 2019 due to his preoccupation with organisational matters, now returns to his home constituency, with the Gandhis’ clearance, to try and wrest it from the CPI-M.
It also means that Congress is ready to sacrifice a RS seat from Rajasthan if Venugopal wrests Alappuzha. After Kerala Congress veteran, the late K Karunakaran’s daughter, Padmaja Venugopal joined BJP, Congress benched the sitting MP of Thrissur (the political home pitch of the Karunakaran family) TN Prathapan and brought in his place Karunakaran’s son and former PCC chief K Muralidharan, who is currently MP of Vadakara.
Youth Congress leader and sitting MLA Shafi Paramabil is fielded as party nominee from Vadakara against former state health minister KK Shylaja of CPI-M. Kerala PCC president K Sudhakaran has been renominated to defend his sitting seat of Kannur. AICC has renominated the party’s lone sitting LS MP DK Suresh, brother of Karnataka PCC chief cum deputy CM DK Shivakumar, from Bengaluru Rural. The party has fielded SP Muddahanume Gowda from his old Tumakuru seat. He recently did a ‘ghar wapsi’ after foraying into BJP. In Shivamogga, Geetha Shivarajkumar, daughter of the former Congress CM Bangarappa will be taking on BJP stalwart BS Yediyurappa’s son BY Raghavendra (BJP). Bangarappa’s family hails from Shivamogga district, but she came third contesting as JDS candidate in Shivamogga seat in 2014. In Haveri, Congress is fielding Anand Swamy Gada Devara Math to take on BJP’s likely candidate Basavaraj Bommai, the former CM.
Congress has fielded sitting MP from Shillong Vincent H Pala while MLA from Gambegre, Saleng A Sangma, is fielded from Tura seat. Former MLA Ashish Kumar Saha, Tripura unit chief of Congress, is fielded from Tripura West seat. In Nagaland’s lone LS seat, Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee chief S Supongmeren Jamir is the candidate. In Sikkim, Gopal Chettri is the candidate.
