Rae Bareli: Rahul Gandhi Wins With 3.9 Lakh Vote Margin, Highest In UP (image: .facebook.com/INCUttarPradesh)
Rahul Gandhi, the former Congress president and party’s senior leader, who was also in the fray in the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala, has won from Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli constituency. The Congress leader defeated BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh and BSP’s Thakur Prasad Yadav with a whopping margin of 3,90,030 votes.
Rae Bareli, a Congress bastion, which elected a non-Congress party thrice in its history, went to polls on the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections this time. During the last Lok Sabha elections, Sonia Gandhi had a majority of more than 1.67 lakh votes. Before that, in all the elections she had won, she had maintained a majority of more than 2.49 lakh votes.
Before Sonia Gandhi, the Rae Bareli constituency was represented by Satish Sharma, Sheila Kaula, Arun Nehru, Indira Gandhi, RP Singh, Bajinath Kureel and Feroze Gandhi from Congress. This constituency has also witnessed the defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977 by the hands of Raj Narain who defeated the former prime minister with more than 50 thousand votes in the elections that was held after the emergency was lifted. He contested the elections as a Janata alliance candidate at that time.
Apart from 1977, Rae Bareli had elected non-Congress candidates in 1996 and 1998 – BJP’s Ashok Singh was elected both the times.
Rahul Gandhi, who was a Member of Parliament from Wayanad in the 17th Lok Sabha, was defeated by Smiti Irani in Amethi in 2019. He had been an MP of Amethi for three times before that. Great grandson of former prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and grandson of Indira Gandhi, he has been spearheading the Congress campaing in the 2024 elections. His father and former prime minister of India Rajiv Gandhi was a four-time MP of Amethi before he was assassinated by a suicide bomber of LTTE in 1991. His mother Sonia Gandhi is the longest serving Congress president and was the chaipreson of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) that ruled India from 2004 to 2014.
