Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Why Congress still wants Rahul to contest from Wayanad?

Rahul Gandhi's yatra to enter Gujarat on Thursday

While it has not yet been formally announced if Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will again contest from Wayanad in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the debate around it has intensified after the CPI declared its candidate for the Kerala constituency.

After the CPI announced senior party leader Annie Raja as their candidate for Wayanad, the Left parties, which are part of the opposition INDIA bloc, asked Gandhi and Congress what message they would be sending out if he were to contest the general election from Wayanad where his principal rival would be the CPI. Annie Raja is the wife of CPI general secretary D Raja.

What do Left parties say?

"Rahul Gandhi and the Congress need to think, they say that their fight is against BJP. In Kerala, if you come and fight against the Left, what message are you giving? So, they need to think about their seat once again," said CPM leader Brinda Karat.

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Both CPI and CPM are part of the INDIA bloc at the national level, but they are rivals of the Congress in Kerala. The two Left parties have urged the Congress to consider a seat for Gandhi in some other state, particularly where the party’s chief opponent is the BJP. They find it pointless for Rahul Gandhi to fight from Kerala which has just 20 seats.

The Left parties have reasoned that Rahul should contest from the Hindi heartland states where Congress is in a direct contest with the BJP. Justifying Rahul’s decision to contest from Wayanad, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, “For example, in my own constituency, BJP came second in the last two elections. Yet a significant portion of the anti-BJP vote is taken by the third-placed Communist candidate. If it's okay for them to oppose me in Thiruvananthapuram, why can't Rahul Gandhi oppose them in Wayanad?”

Why Rahul Gandhi may still contest from Wayanad

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi lost Amethi, his family bastion in Uttar Pradesh. However, he won from Wayanad by defeating CPI candidate PP Suneer by a margin of 4,31,770 votes. Gandhi won with a massive 64.8 percent vote share. In the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, Congress candidate MI Shanavas won the seat against CPI candidate Sathyan Mokeri. Shanavas won from this seat for the first time in 2009. In 2009, Shanavas had won by 1.53 lakh votes.

In fact, Wayanad has been a safe Congress seat in the Lok Sabha elections with the party winning it the last three times. This is probably the main cause behind fielding Gandhi from Wayanad. In 2019, the late Oommen Chandy and a senior Congress leader engineered a coup by persuading the Congress brass to field Gandhi from Wayanad. It is said that Gandhi’s presence in Wayanad helped the UDF bag 19 of the 20 seats in the state.

Meanwhile, Congress leader VD Satheesan said the KPCC and UDF, including the IUML, made a strong pitch for Gandhi’s candidature from Wayanad. “The CPM election posters in Tamil Nadu featured Mr. Gandhi’s picture. The LDF should support Rahul Gandhi’s candidature instead of crying hoarse about it,” he said.

History of Wayanad

Before Wayanad was created in 1980 by way of delimitation, the Lok Sabha seat was split across Calicut, Cannanore and Manjeri. In the nine elections held before the district was carved out, the Congress won Calicut and Cannanore six times each, but never won Manjeri. The Left parties won Calicut and Manjeri once and Cannanore thrice. The CPI only won once from Cannanore in 1977.