Gandhi is the main determine in an opposition alliance combating an uphill battle on this 12 months’s polls in opposition to Modi, who stays broadly standard.
1000’s of supporters thronged India’s most outstanding opposition chief Rahul Gandhi throughout a marketing campaign procession earlier than his formal nomination for the parliamentary election beginning this month.
Gandhi, 53, is the son, grandson, and great-grandson of former prime ministers, however his Congress celebration has already suffered two landslide defeats in opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP).
He’s the main determine in an opposition alliance combating an uphill battle on this 12 months’s polls in opposition to Modi, who stays broadly standard after a decade in energy and is prone to retain workplace comfortably.
However Gandhi was given a rousing reception in Wayanad, a picturesque city within the southern state of Kerala, with an enormous crowd gathering to cheer his arrival on Wednesday.
“I don’t think of you as my electorate but as my family,” he advised the gathering from atop a truck, flanked by his youthful sister Priyanka and cadres from his celebration.
Gandhi formally filed his nomination, vying to retain the Wayanad seat, with the native election workplace after the rally.
He was first elected from the constituency in 2019 however was briefly disqualified from parliament final 12 months after his conviction for felony libel in a case filed by a member of the BJP.
He was reinstated pending a Supreme Court docket attraction, however his determination to recontest the seat has prompted some friction inside the opposition Indian Nationwide Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), of which Congress is a component.
His important challenger is firebrand left-wing candidate Annie Raja of the Communist Occasion of India, a fellow member of the INDIA bloc. Her allies have criticised Gandhi for not selecting to battle in one other seat in opposition to a longtime candidate from Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP).
“The entire country should discuss the inappropriateness of this,” Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a member of Raja’s celebration, advised reporters on Tuesday.
Within the 2019 common election, Gandhi misplaced his previously secure seat of Amethi within the northern Uttar Pradesh state to the then-rising BJP star, Smriti Irani. He blamed the defeat on the BJP utilizing “the entire machinery of the Indian state” in opposition to the opposition.
Beginning April 19, practically a billion Indians will vote to elect a brand new authorities within the seven-phase election. The votes can be counted on June 4.