Indecision cannot be the hallmark of a party like the Indian National Congress. Amethi and Raebareli in UP were two constituencies where the party should have announced its candidates soon after forging an alliance with the Samajwadi Party. Alas, these are the two constituencies where they have not yet decided on their candidates. Sonia Gandhi’s inability to defend Raebareli is understandable given her medical condition. It is a different matter that it did not prevent her from finding a secure seat in the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan. The party in UP wanted Rahul Gandhi to contest from Amethi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi from Raebareli. They are still undecided. Had the party announced their names, it would have given its national campaign a head start.
Alas, Rahul Gandhi has decided to contest from Wayanad in Kerala. True, it elected him in 2019 when the voters of Amethi ditched him in the same election. In her time, his grandmother Indira Gandhi contested once from Medak in undivided Andhra Pradesh and Chikmagalur in Karnataka. Of course, she went to the south under different circumstances. However, in the next election she went back to Raebareli, which accepted her with open hands. The tradition continued even in 2019 when Sonia Gandhi was the only Congress candidate to win from Uttar Pradesh. If Gandhi finally leaves Amethi, it will be a bad advertisement for the Congress and the I.N.D.I.A alliance it heads. The public perception will be that he is scared of a defeat in Amethi.
Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of certainty. It does not really matter whether Gandhi wins a seat or not. We had a prime minister who ruled the country for ten years without winning a seat in the Lok Sabha. In Gandhi’s own case, he commanded greater support among the people when he was unseated from Parliament for a brief while. Given the composition of the electorate, the UDF led by the Congress would have been able to retain Wayanad, if it had fielded a capable, young candidate from Kerala. In other words, Rahul Gandhi is not indispensable for the Congress’s victory in Wayanad. In Raebareli and Amethi, the Congress has its traditional vote bank, besides, of course, the support of the SP and all those who are put off by the BJP’s haughtiness. How one wishes Rahul Gandhi had learned from the Bard’s line that “security is mortal’s chiefest enemy”!