May five this year brought three important news for India’s political landscape dominated by the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. One, Rahul Gandhi will contest the elections from a second constituency Raebareli in northern India, hundreds of miles away from Wayanad in south India where he is in the fray and where polling was over on April 26.

Two, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has indefinitely put off, once again, her electoral debut. The third, though somewhat less important, development was Congress fielding the Gandhi family’s long-time loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma, from Amethi.

Rahul filed his nomination papers from Raebareli just hours before the deadline ended, clearly showing an intense dilemma not just for the 53-year-old scion of the Gandhi family but also for his party. By choosing Raebareli, Rahul avoided a clash with and insulated himself from the potential risk of losing again to BJP candidate Smriti Irani after having lost to her by over 55,000 votes in 2019.

By deciding to be in fray from Raebareli, Rahul, according to sources in Congress, seeks to amplify two key messages: (1) that he is a bridge between north and south India in sync with his Bharat Jodo Yatra which began in the south and ended in the north in 2023.

(2) this message was more important for Congress after its near-total wipeout from the Hindi-speaking belt of northern India following the defeat to the BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh last year.

The only state in the entire northern India where the Congress is in power is Himachal Pradesh. In other words, Congress wanted to signal that it was back in the battle for the heartland states. After all, Raebareli was the only seat Congress could manage to win in 2019 when it had faced a meltdown in other parts of Uttar Pradesh and India to plunge to its lowest tally of Lok Sabha seats in the face of a Narendra Modi wave.  

Raebareli may be a safer seat than Amethi for Rahul. However, a bigger challenge in the form of a dilemma for him would be if he wins in both Wayanad and Raebareli, a constituency represented by his mother Sonia five times in a row since 2004, and Rahul has to choose which seat he should retain if he wins both Wayanad and Raebareli.

By announcing his decision to contest in Raebareli after the voting in Wayanad was over, Rahul wanted to avoid, at least till the elections were over, facing the difficult question of which seat he would retain in the event of victory from both.

Giving up either Wayanad or Amethi will have implications for the sensitive north-south issue. Congress has as much stakes in Kerala as in north India for its revival. Congress cannot be oblivious of the fact that BJP too is making an aggressive push to expand its presence in the south.             

A view by some political analysts is that Rahul’s shying away from Amethi has put Congress and its allies under the banner of INDIA in the throes of a perception crisis. This view has gained strength from Congress's decision to field Kishori Lal Sharma, a long-time Gandhi family loyalist, from Amethi saying this may amount to giving a walkover to Smriti Irani there.

Rahul’s Raebareli decision has opened him to jibes from the BJP which accused him of “running away” from a rematch against Smriti Irani and criticism from the Congress leader’s challenger Annie Raja of the Communist Party of India in Wayanad this time. Annie, the wife of CPI general secretary D Raja, said Rahul’s decision to also contest from Raebareli is a “moral failure”. She contended that Rahul’s decision to be in the fray from Raebareli was not something that happened overnight.

It has been discussed for some time but Rahul did “injustice” to Wayanad voters by hiding this till voting was over in Wayanad, Annie further argued.

There is recognition privately articulated in both Congress and in the INDIA bloc that Rahul’s refusal to contest from Amethi and Priyanka’s refusal to make her electoral debut from Raebareli has created a perception the opposition leaders were working to create that the election was getting closer than it is being projected.

While Rahul made his electoral debut from Amethi in 2004 when he was in his thirties, Priyanka, 52, is yet to take the plunge. Priyanka continues to refuse to take up the gauntlet of direct electoral battle even after her assertion in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha poll in UP: “'Ladki Hoon Lad Sakthi Hoon' (I am a girl and I can fight), tweaking an ad jingle.

The question being asked: why is Priyanka ceding room to Rahul at the centre stage of Congress politics? The answer is: Congress has once again demonstrated that it is Rahul and not Priyanka who will be in charge of the party in the years to come.

There is also a possibility that if Rahul wins both Amethi and Wayanad and vacates one, Priyanka may step in there.  The hard question for Priyanka would be: what and how much value addition her electoral debut bring to Congress in politically changed India where an entire new generation of voters, particularly its aspirational youth, react to any sense of entitlement in any sphere of life?
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The writer is a veteran Indian journalist