Wayanad: Priyanka Gandhi signs nomination papers to contest Wayanad by-polls

The Election Commission announced the by-poll to Wayanad Lok Sabha seat last week. Her electoral debut could her enter Parliament five years after joining active politics.

Soon after the EC announced the Wayanad by-poll, the Congress declared that Priyanka Gandhi would be its candidate from the seat in Kerala.

With the Congress fielding the AICC general secretary from Wayanad, party workers had put up posters in the constituency which had “Wayanadinte Priyankari (Wayanad’s beloved)” written on it.

Why is by-election being held in Wayanad?

Days after the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had announced that Rahul Gandhi will retain the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh and vacate the Wayanad seat in Kerala, from where his sister Priyanka Gandhi will make her electoral debut.

If elected, this will be the first time that Priyanka Gandhi will enter Parliament as an MP. This will also be the first time that the three Gandhi family members — Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka — will be in Parliament together.The EC announced by-polls to the Wayanad and Nanded Lok Sabha seats as well as in 48 Assembly constituencies on October 15. The by-poll to the Wayanad parliamentary seat and 47 Assembly seats will be held on November 13, along with the first phase of polling for the Jharkhand Assembly. The results will be announced on November 23.

Priyanka Gandhi in politics

Since her entry into active politics in 2019, Priyanka Gandhi has often been projected as a possible challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi and also, as a successor to Congress veteran Sonia Gandhi in the family pocket borough of Rae Bareli.However, the Congress has decided to field her from Wayanad, the parliamentary seat that her elder brother Rahul won for two consecutive elections. Priyanka Gandhi was earlier the Congress in-charge of Uttar Pradesh.

She emerged as the party’s strategist and star campaigner, helping the Congress make impressive gains in some states as well as in the Lok Sabha polls held earlier in the year.

After her name was announced for the Wayanad by-poll in June, Priyanka Gandhi had said, “I am not nervous at all…. I am very happy to be able to represent Wayanad. All I will say is that I will not let them feel his (Rahul Gandhi’s) absence. I will work hard and try my best to make everybody happy and be a good representative.”

“I have a good relationship with Rae Bareli as I worked there for 20 years and that relationship will never break,” she had said, adding that both she and her brother will work together in both the constituencies.

Priyanka Gandhi’s poll debut comes at a time when the Congress has been jolted by an electoral defeat in Haryana and it would be interesting to see if she would be able to steer the Wayanad campaign, along with the canvassing for the Jharkhand and Maharashtra polls, to put the grand old party back on track.

(With PTI inputs)