Amethi in Uttar Pradesh is a high profile Lok Sabha constituency. It’s been a family bastion of the Gandhis for more than three decades. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has been contesting and winning from Amethi since 2004; he is contesting from Amethi in 2019 as well. Between 1980 and 2004, Amethi was represented by Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Satish Sharma, a close aide of Rajiv. But on March 31, the Congress announced that Rahul would be contesting this general election from Wayanad in Kerala, in addition to his traditional seat of Amethi.
This has been interpreted as the first signs of the Congress fortress in Amethi under threat from BJP’s Smriti Irani and hence the reason for Rahul choosing Wayanad as a backup. Incidentally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also contested 2014 general elections from two constituencies- Vadodara and Varanasi.
Amethi is being seen as a tight contest, while Wayanad is perceived as a ‘safe seat’. The Congress party has maintained that Rahul’s decision to contest from the hilly Kerala district is because of requests from many leaders from Southern states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka urging him to contest from their state. Rahul’s decision to contest from a second seat has bolstered the BJP’s charge that the Congress president is ‘running away’ because he is unsure of winning from Amethi.
At a public rally in Wardha, Maharashtra, last week, Modi said that the Congress party had ‘insulted’ Hindus by using the term ‘Hindu terror’ and knew it would be punished by the community, thus implying that it is for this reason that Rahul decided to contest from Wayanad, where the ‘majority is in minority’. At another rally in Nanded on Saturday, Modi said
Rahul ‘ran to Wayanad’ because his position in Amethi had become uncertain. Responding to Modi’s charge, Rahul explained that he was fighting from Wayanad because ‘south India feels hostility from Modi’, adding, ‘I wanted to send a message that I am standing with you’. By choosing Wayanad, according to the Congress, Rahul will be contesting from a seat that represents three southern states.
Wayanad shares borders with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It is also a relatively backward region, which is home to Kerala’s largest tribal population: 18 per cent of the district’s electorate comes from tribal community. Wayanad is not a constituency where the ‘majority is in minority’: according to census data, 49.5 per cent of its population is Hindu, 29 per cent Muslim and 21 per cent Christian. So, the vote share of the majority community and minorities is almost equal. Now the questions: is Wayanad a ‘safe’ seat for Rahul?
It is not and it appears to be a more difficult contest than Amethi. Wayanad became a Lok Sabha constituency in 2009, when new constituencies were demarcated. The Congress won it in 2009 by over 1.5 lakh votes. The Congress again won it in 2014, but its margin came down to about 20,000 votes. Wayanad has seven assembly constituencies.
In 2016 assembly polls, the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) won four of the seven seats. In the same state elections, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) won a total 4.7 lakh votes, while the LDF won 4.5 lakh votes. The difference of just about 20,000 votes between UDF and LDF makes Wayanad a tough contest for Rahul. A swing of about 1 per cent could cost the Congress president the Wayanad seat.
Now, let’s move on to Amethi. It could be the safe seat for Rahul, though Smriti may pose a tough challenge. A narrative has been created in the social media world that Amethi is a tight contest and that Rahul is worried about losing it to Smriti. But the facts are entirely different. Sanjay Gandhi won it in 1980 and after his death Rajiv won it in 1991 in a by-election and retained it till he was assassinated in 1991.
Satish Sharma won it in 1991 and 1996 for the Congress. In 1998, Sanjay Singh, a former Congress loyalist, fought the election on a BJP ticket and defeated Satish Sharma by less than 24,000 votes. Singh was defeated by Sonia Gandhi in 1999. She later vacated the seat for Rahul who fought his first Lok Sabha election from Amethi in 2004. Since then, Amethi has been with the Congress.
In 2004, Rahul Gandhi polled 64 per cent of votes. BJP came third and got less than 10 per cent votes. In 2009, Rahul won from Amethi with nearly 72 per cent or 3.7 lakh votes; BJP got less than 6 per cent votes. Yes, 2014 was a tough contest when the BJP swept UP. Rahul’s vote share dropped by 28 per cent to less than 47 per cent but managed to retain Amethi by over 1.07 lakh votes. There was no SP candidate and 83,000 votes were shared between BSP and AAP candidates.
The presence of a SP candidate in the fray would have certainly reduced Rahul’s vote share. It is true that the entire BJP top brass has pulled its weight to wrest Amethi from Rahul Gandhi to score a psychological advantage over the Congress and Smriti has been in a campaign mode in the last five years in Amethi. In early March, the prime minister announced a slew of development projects amounting to Rs 538 crore for Amethi, thus providing additional strength to Smriti’s candidature.
Earlier, BJP president Amit Shah and UP chief minister Yogi Adiyanath had held rallies in Amethi telling people why they should choose Smriti over Rahul Gandhi. It is true that the Congress is not a significant player in UP. After being left out of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, the party is unlikely to make much impact in the state, but has a fair chance of winning quite a few seats amidst a BJP versus SP-BSP fight. This time, the SP-BSP combine has put up no candidates in Amethi and Raebareli.
That makes Rahul Gandhi’s chances of winning Amethi much easier, if the combined vote share of SP, BSP and Congress at 57 per cent against BJP’s 37 per cent in the 2017 UP assembly elections holds. Given the 20 per cent vote share advantage Rahul has, Smriti will need a huge swing of more than 10 per cent in her favour to defeat the Congress president. Why then did Rahul choose Wayanad in the South as his second seat? That’s another interesting story for another article later.
A L I Chougule is an independent Mumbai-based senior journalist.
